Formlabs announced a new service that could dramatically expand their dental business.
The company, launched over ten years ago with an inexpensive general purpose resin 3D printer now is far larger and focuses primarily on industry. One of the industries addressed by Formlabs is dental, where they’ve made deep inroads in recent years.
In fact, Formlabs created a new division, “Formlabs Dental” specifically to work on that industry.
Since then, Formlabs has released equipment variants specifically designed for the dental market, as well as a slew of dental materials for them.
But now they’ve launched something called the “Formlabs Dental Academy”. Formlabs describes the new service:
“A new educational platform dedicated to advancing 3D printing in dentistry with online and in-person courses, step-by-step guides, webinars, and more. The platform includes free and paid courses designed to enable dental professionals, such as dental lab technicians, orthodontists, and clinicians to learn and successfully implement 3D printing technology in their businesses.”
Evidently Formlabs Dental has partnered with several notable institutions around the world to help provide content for the academy, including the London Dental Institute and several others.
Course material will primarily be provided online, but there is also the surprising option of in-person events located at Formlabs offices in Boston, Budapest and Berlin. Formlabs Dental said the courses will be available in English, Spanish, German and Swedish. Material will be available both free and paid.
It seems to be the intent of Formlabs Dental to incrementally increase the content and coverage of the academy over time.
At first glance this venture would seem quite appropriate, as everyone needs to learn more, and Formlabs Dental is providing access via an easy-to-use centralized service.
However, there are deeper strategies at play here.
The dental market is truly enormous, with every city having dental activities taking place daily. Large dental services provide technical capabilities to dentists, and some operate their own equipment.
But like many industries, the dental world is slow to change, and perhaps more than most. The medical phrase, “Do No Harm”, to many means “Don’t Change Anything”, an attitude that pervades some dental operations. This is a key barrier to adoption of a new technology in dentistry.
In the past Formlabs has appeared at dental industry events to display their technology and advantages, but that can reach only so many clients. The dental industry also has the unique characteristic of being very distributed and not centralized: there are countless potential customers, and it’s a huge challenge to reach them all.
By opening up the Formlabs Dental Academy, Formlabs is able to “automate” some of that contact and education. The service will be able to potentially “turn on” clients that might otherwise never learn that their work could be made better with 3D printing technology.
Formlabs Dental has also made the right decision by partnering with existing respected dental educational institutions, where practitioners will have trust. It’s one thing to hear the benefits of a technology from a manufacturer of that technology, and quite another to hear it from an independent trusted authority.
In the long term, we could see Formlabs’ dental sales significantly rise as a result of the new academy.
