If you live in France, and soon elsewhere in Europe and in the U.S., and if you need a dental prosthesis, chances are good that RFID tags are involved in the manufacturing process, according to this article from the RFID Journal. The tag is embedded by the dental lab in the cast which will be used to make the prosthesis. Then it is used to record the whole history of the crown, a process requested by a European sanitary regulation. Before delivering the bridge to your dentist, all the data is copied to a smart card that will be given to you. The company is also studying the idea to put directly the tag inside the prosthesis. Maybe one day, when your dentist installs your new bridge, you'll also be the owner of a deactivated RFID tag inside it. Read more...
Here is the introduction from the RFID Journal article.
French RFID startup Dentalax has launched its RFID-based system to provide a way to reduce errors and improve productivity in the development of dental prosthetics such as crowns and bridges.
By deploying the Dentalax RFID system, the company maintains, a dental lab can cut the time taken to accurately process each item. "With the Dentalax system the time savings for each workstation operator is on average three minutes per job -- that can save up to 45 minutes each day," says Rémy-Jean Cachia CEO at Dentalax.
And the company has a big target: there are more than 50,000 dental labs in Europe only.
The RFID Journal then explains the process.
A dentist makes an initial cast of the patient’s teeth, and then sends the cast to the laboratory. At the lab, technicians use the initial cast to make a second cast, or die, that will be used to create the actual bridge or crown. Before the second cast hardens, a technician embeds a PicoPass chip into it. Once the plaster or resin used to make the die has cured, the tag is locked inside the material. Throughout the prosthesis manufacturing process, each time an operation is carried out on the prosthesis, that action is recorded on the chip inside the die by the technician using a PC fitted with a RFID reader.
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Here you can see the real size of the chip which will be buried inside the cast of your new crown or bridge (Credit: Dentalax, France). |
All the work done a prosthesis is recorded on the tag, including the patient's name or number, the operator and the maetrials used. All this data will be copied to a smart card that will accompany your prosthesis and delivered to your dentist.
The advantage of such a card is that if a patient requires another prosthesis for other teeth at another stage in his life, he can present it to the practitioner, who will retrieve all the data related to all the prostheses of the patient," says Cachia.
In addition, a European sanitary regulation -- European directive 9342C which was implemented in 1993 -- requires the prosthesis that a laboratory delivers to a dentist be accompanied by a record, either paper or digital, that includes the history of the making of the item. According to Dentalax, the lab technician who made the prosthesis can then wipe out the chip’s data, thereby ensuring confidentiality.
Will we get one day dental prosthesis with deactivated RFID tags inside them? Dentalax ponders over the idea and says the technology is ready. But for many reasons, including privacy, it is postponing its deployment.
Sources: Catherine Ilic, RFID Journal, October 25, 2004; Dentalax website
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