All smiles

The advancement and delivery of dental care may not enjoy the same high profile as general healthcare, but it’s no less important. A great deal of innovative work goes on behind the scenes by an industry whose thanks can be as simple as a healthy smile.

And Dentsply Sirona is responsible for many of those – in fact, the company’s products reach roughly a billion patients annually. A 2016 merger brought together two giants of the dental industry – Dentsply International, founded in New York City in 1899, and German firm Sirona, founded in 1877.

Between these two firms, innovation abounds and has been a central tenet since their inception. Such innovations have included the first electric dental drill, the digital first X-ray unit and the first dental chairside computer-aided design/computer-aided manufacturing system. These innovations have helped dentists and their patients around the world to improve efficiency and outcomes.

The merger resulted in another first – Dentsply Sirona, the world’s largest manufacturer of professional dental products and technologies, from rudimentary consumables all the way through to the most advanced digital equipment in the marketplace.

The company is rich with opportunity and innovation, something that attracted President and CEO Simon Campion to the business two years ago.

“I’d been in senior leadership positions for several years at medical device companies,” he tells The CEO Magazine.

“But there were several opportunities I could recognize at Dentsply Sirona. I felt my experience in enterprise transformation, customer-centricity and innovation could help the company become more efficient and more competitive, while focusing its innovation agenda.”

Innovation at its core

Excited to apply his experience to driving clinical outcomes and efficiencies for patients and dental practices alike, Campion became a CEO for the first time in September 2022. The first item on his agenda was digitalization – both enterprise digitalization and the continued digitalization of dentistry.

“That’s what enables high quality, effective and efficient dentistry to be performed. So we’ve established a robust innovation process to address that,” he explains.

“We’re also focusing on high-growth categories for our company, such as aligners and our implants business, while also driving performance in all our other spaces as well.”

Streamlining Dentsply Sirona’s 14 enterprise resource planning systems into one through a global implementation of SAP S/4HANA has been a cornerstone of enterprise digitalization, in addition to a relentless focus on network efficiency and company-wide quality.

“We want to make it easier for customers to do business with us,” Campion says. “At the same time, driving digital dentistry is a continuous focus for us.”

Fruits of this ceaseless work include the recent launch of Primescan 2, the first cloud-native intraoral scanning solution, and DS Core, Dentsply Sirona’s cloud platform, which enjoys a regular cycle of innovation.

“Our ability to innovate is critically important to us and to the customers and patients they serve,” he reveals. “I also believe the fact that we can provide a dental practice of any shape, size or affiliation with a single source for the vast majority of their dental products is a competitive advantage.”

Dental professionals can use Dentsply Sirona consumables, restorative products, preventatives, endodontic products, implants, aligners, intraoral scanners, 3D printers and dental chairs.

“We really are a one-stop shop for high-quality products and technology that enable practices to be more efficient and improve their delivery and the outcomes of the care they provide,” he affirms.

“And for a dental business, that means improved profitability.”

Global quality

One of Dentsply Sirona’s key client partnerships is with PDS Health. The alignment provides the leading dental support organization’s network of over 1,600 dentists, across more than 580 dental practices in the United States, with access to Dentsply Sirona innovations.

“The shared vision we have is to transform dentistry,” Campion says. “Through our partnership with PDS, they get to evaluate our innovation during their development and provide real-world insights. This feedback is critical to us and to the broader dental community as it ensures we are bringing meaningful innovation to the dental market.”

Campion says Stephen Thorne, the Founder and CEO of PDS Health, is a thought leader in the industry, and that Dentsply Sirona’s innovations will allow PDS to further invest in its transformative agenda.

“Ultimately, we’ll not only help ourselves and help PDS, but it’s going to help the delivery of quality dental care around the world,” Thorne says.

The transformational journey of Dentsply Sirona may not have a finish line, but its impact is clear.

“It impacts the performance of our company and of dental practices globally,” Campion adds.

“We’re relentlessly focused on improving how dentistry is performed and delivered, on improving the customer experience for partners of Dentsply Sirona and on driving our innovation agenda forward.”