The innovation ecosystem in the country is in its best time ever. Startups are not only transforming the entire landscape of product development, service delivery and business models, but they are also creating a significant social impact. Enablers like incubators, accelerators, government grants, private funding agencies and investment networks are all on the rise, looking with eagle’s eyes to support game-changing innovations irrespective of the domain and speciality.
And with the pandemic giving a forceful push for health care innovations, the entire ecosystem is setting itself up for huge breakthroughs and market-disrupting solutions in the coming years. Having said all this for setting the context, let us quickly see why the time is right for dental innovations in India.
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- In this age of social media, there is an increasing awareness of Oral health problems and a good understanding of the importance of oral care among Indians But, at the same time, specialized and modern dental treatments come with a thicker price tag!
- Unlike in the past, there is an increasing availability of dental manpower and resources in India Still, much of rural India doesn’t have adequate access to high-quality dental care facilities
- Newer versions of Toothbrush, Toothpaste and Mouthwash are released frequently in the Indian market Yet, the prevalence of dental problems is still significant owing to changing diet patterns, tobacco usage & other compounding factors!
The above 3 points clearly show that there is an increasing need for dental innovations that are holistic, inclusive and Disruptive. Solutions that can decrease the cost of dental treatments, improve the quality of dental treatments and increase the accessibility to oral health care are the need of the hour.
Dental Colleges and Dental Practitioners should leverage this existing thrust for innovations by forming multidisciplinary teams, learning and unlearning concepts, capacity building and taking up the bio-design approach to problem-solving. It would even be wonderful if ‘Chief innovation officers’ were a standard part of the dental academic teams.
Bottom line: There is an increasing scope for developing and deploying dental Innovations. If you are thinking about the best time to start working on such disruptions in dentistry, don’t look too far because ‘NOW’ is the time to do it.
If we as dentists delay too long before wearing the innovator’s hat, we might as well miss the bus.