It's SmileStream's 1 year anniversary! Dr. David Dana and Dr. Shock Wier reflect on the past year of software developments and discuss the exciting features coming soon in this video.
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Video Transcript
DR. DAVID DANA: Hi everyone. David Dana here once again with my dear friend Dr. Shockley Wier. How are you doing
DR. SHOCKLEY WIER: Fantastic, thank you.
DR. DANA: Another weekend in California now teaching Seminar 2. So the reason I'm having you here today...today SmileStream is a year old and you were actually one of the first instructors that got to use it and teach with it. During this year we've made quite a bit of changes and improvements on the software. So you use it all the time in class, you use it all the time in your practice, how do you like it?
DR. WIER: Well I have to tell you that you and Miles did a fantastic job developing the software. It's a great tool. It has made my practice much more efficient. It's made my diagnosis much more efficient. The improvements that you have created in SmileStream over the things we have in the past, it's leaps and bounds better than what it used to be. I've heard it from the students over and over and over again because I've been teaching the software all weekend and everyone seems to love it so thank you.
DR. DANA: Don't you love those automatic visual treatment objectives?
DR. WIER: I have to tell you I was honestly skeptical whenever they came up with automatic treatment objectives but the fact that I can push a button and within a few seconds I can see all the different possible treatment options and then I can go back and see how these treatment options were created has been such a tremendous time saver.
DR. DANA: It made 15 minutes into 15 seconds.
DR. WIER: Exactly and the students love it. I've had retakes in class and when the retakes see the new software and I hit the button all of them are like oh I wish I would have had that whenever I was going through the program. So it speaks volumes about how much more efficient the software is.
DR. DANA: The appliance design, the way we put it, the way we adapted it into the treatment plan, do you find it much easier and convenient to use?
DR. WIER: Much easier for the people that have been using the old software. We used to do things with screenshots and having to transfer things back and forth and the thing that I found with the new software is in all aspects it increases efficiency. With the click of one button it takes all the bands and brackets from the appliance design right into the ordering form, so it simplifies the ordering of the bands and brackets. I have to brag about another feature…the range of bracket torque in the VTOs. There's no more going to external programs, you just click a button. It lays it right on top of it. All of the treatment plans are there with the click of a button.
DR. DANA: It also allows you to add gable bends to your brackets and see where the tooth will end on the RBTs.
DR. WIER: The efficiency...it can literally cut your time in half.
DR. DANA: I don't know if you know noticed this but this is something I notice in my practice, selecting the brackets on the treatment plan. To me, it makes it much faster because I don't have to go through scrolling pages. Also, it has reduced errors when we order stuff and it also has reduced my bracket selection errors because in the past when I was scrolling through 10 different brackets sometimes I would click the wrong one or I would tell my assistant to put the rotations in there, get me linguals and labials or something. All of a sudden I would get a labial bracket where I wanted a lingual. Have you noticed that reduction of errors in your appliance design as well?
DR. WIER: When designing an appliance everything is streamlined and it's all around much easier to order an appliance. You know another thing that I've really noticed in SmileStream is for a while some of our treatment plans were starting to look intimidating because they were so long and a student would look at it and they'd see all these words and they'd become frightened by this list of words. Now the SmileStream treatment plans are significantly consolidated so everything's there in a concise form so it's not so overwhelming. But if you need additional information, we have the orange buttons that you've created so that all I have to do is click on a button and it expands it and then all the information is right there should I need it. But the times where I don't need it I'm not overwhelmed by all the information. Great tool. Another great tool that students have raved about this weekend is in the ceph tracing and the model measuring. The new software is much easier to do the tracing and at the same time there embedded in the screen is a tutorial so if there's anything that you don't remember click on it. It shows you right where the point is supposed to be and it's just another example of the great increase in efficiency.
DR. DANA: It's been a long process, definitely, for me and Miles and our programmer John but we have a couple more surprises coming up. Pretty soon you're going to be able to have libraries. We're almost ready to get that product out where you can have your own library of materials that you use to teach or diagnose cases that you can share with the whole community. So I am glad that you are enjoying it and the students are loving it. You know I don't travel and teach as much as you are so hearing your feedback of the students loving it makes me really happy. So I guess we can really recommend everyone that has gone through Progressive and is still using the old IPSoft, this is the time to change.
DR. WIER: Absolutely and another thing that has caused some people to delay it is not having a standalone version. Now we have a standalone version for both Windows and for Mac. So having a standalone version as well as a cloud-based version is fantastic because there's sometimes where my internet access is poor, there's times where I work on an airplane and having the standalone version it runs very quickly and very smoothly but also having the cloud-based version to where all my data is stored up in the cloud is fantastic. That way, god forbid, I lose my computer, one of my children spills a liquid on my computer, somebody steals my computer, it's just as simple as going to another computer and everything's right there for me.
DR. DANA: I just got a new computer a couple of weeks ago. My computer one day just died. I couldn't turn it on. Three days before I had just uploaded all my final patients from IPSoft and I'm so glad because dead computer or no computer I can go anywhere and open all my cases and I was about to lose them all.
DR. WIER: Now you told me there's an app and I haven't even tried this yet so I'm excited to try this.
DR. DANA: Go to the App Store and download the app and it allows you to be in contact with all the community but also you can order materials, supplies, and send cases. You get notified if you receive a case, students send cases to us all the time and when we send them back they will get notified on the app. It's really, really a good, cool tool and pretty soon we're going to be able to have streaming video in there so if you want to see a video from our library you can just watch it on your phone.
DR. WIER: I'm excited.
DR. DANA: Yeah go to the to the App Store and download it.
DR. WIER: Absolutely, thank you for sharing that.
DR. DANA: Thank you. So all of you guys out there that have not yet gotten into SmileStream this is the time. The software is working phenomenally and is much more efficient than what you're used to. Thanks, Shock. It's good seeing you.