Martin Hellawell is in charge of customer and information technology services at Nuview. The expert on integrating cameras and digital microscope photography into dentistry, he advises customers on the best systems and settings to use and the optimum ways of incorporating this into their daily practice. Here he describes some current trends in dental microscopes and looks back over the last ten years of Nuview.
One of the biggest changes in modern dentistry that has affected us at Nuview is the demand from dentists for the enhanced integration with digital technology and the specific changes in that technology that have occurred over the last few years. If we consider the advances in digital SLR cameras for instance; 10 years ago they were still relatively clumsy, oversized and only capable of low resolution imaging but thankfully the technology has moved on in some amazing ways.
Dentists are now able to hold multiple high definition (HD) pictures in their patient notes, and can record images of procedures to go back to for reference and for achieving future patient consent. More and more dentists, especially those who teach, also want to record videos, and the latest technology not only allows the recording of stills but also video images in HD.
Of course what sets Nuview apart is that we exclusively offer the Carl Zeiss range of dental microscopes with their integral HD visualisation systems, industry leading quality optics and an exceptional human interface experience (ergonomics) which makes them second to none. However, what has kept Carl Zeiss microscopes such as the OPMI Pico as being the best in the market, is the continual development, which incorporates and embraces the on-going changes in technology.
One thing that over the last 10 years has remained consistent is our passion for and commitment to the highest quality and finest levels of service. Through continuous feedback and communication with dentists we are able to maintain and perfect the individualised service we can offer. For us feedback has always been really important and we are very proud of the service we provide, for myself, particularly around the Carl Zeiss visualisation systems and helping dentists to exploit camera technology. As a small company we try very hard to build positive and on-going relationships with our dentists.
Looking ahead to the future, the biggest challenges are going to be around incorporating further innovations in visualisation technology. A lot of people have now seen ultra high definition televisions (UHD) and the whole arena of UHD (or 4K as its currently known) will radically change the ways in which even digital SLR cameras work. Right now there is a differentiation and separation between video cameras and SLR cameras, which I think may well entirely vanish in the near future.
Today people are used to, and even expect HD quality images, so what will be interesting over the coming years is to see how UHD fits into and becomes the industry norm, and then how the camera technology adapts to incorporate this emerging technology. Although UHD technology, particularly now that it is being incorporated into televisions, is becoming more readily available in the marketplace, it will take potentially two years before technology standards are properly set out and agreed and we will begin to see cameras and microscopes becoming generally available that fully incorporate UHD technology.
One final change that we’ve seen over the last few years is that whereas dentists were primarily using microscopes for more specialist work, we now see dentists exploiting the power of the high quality magnification in their more general daily practise.
As part of out on-going commitment to exposing and training dentists to the performance and usability of a dental microscope, we at Nuview actively support various organisations and individuals in terms of providing microscopes and expertise for professional courses. We are proud to participate in enhancing the level of skill that both specialist and general dentists have, and for me, helping them to embrace the latest technology in visualisation systems is particularly rewarding.
For more information please call Nuview on 01453 872266,
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