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Simulation in Dental Education

 


 

Simulation is a cornerstone of dental undergraduate and postgraduate training at King's College London. Through the provision of high-fidelity virtual haptic machines and low-fidelity phantom-head simulators, the Faculty of Dentistry, Oral & Craniofacial Sciences is now the first dental school in the world to have successfully integrated a seamless clinical digital learning environment across all our facilities.

Providing a world-class learning environment, we have connected our state-of-the-art dental operating chairs at Guy’s Hospital with our simulation facilities, blending virtual reality with training on real human teeth.

Our physical ‘phantom head’ dental simulators allow practise of COVID secure dental surgery with plastic and human teeth and are connected via high resolution intra-oral scanners to ourvirtual reality high-fidelity haptic simulators. This enables a seamless digital workflow from real patient scans into simulators, and then onto chairside dental CAD/CAM systems.

Students are able to scan real human anatomy and typodont models and practice dental surgery on anatomically correct scans which have voxelised enamel, dentine, pulp, and periodontal and craniofacial anatomy.

Once the surgery has been simulated, the resulting scans can be imported into dental CAD software to analyse the virtual treatment, before students and staff carry out that treatment on patients. The technology available at the GSTT digital dental surgeries is available for use by our students and staff.

fl18_simtocare_2_students The high-fidelity haptic suite on floor 18 of Guy's Hospital Tower Wing.

Social card - Technological or Digital Innovation
King's dentistry simulation facilities won the "Technological or Digital Innovation of the Year" prize at the Times Higher Education Awards 2021. Find out more here.

 

 

 

 

Simulation in the dental curriculum

This short video shows how King's students in the Faculty of Dentistry, Oral & Craniofacial Sciences are able to access a complete digital clinical workflow from intral-oral scanning of real patients, to practising procedures using advanced augmented reality haptic workstations. Hands-on involvement of King's teaching staff at every stage - providing demonstrations, real-world experiential context, and immediate feedback is the thread that unites all of these lab-based clinical sessions.

 

 

Simulation featured on BBC's Morning Live

The faculty's simulation facilities were featured as part of an episode of BBC's Morning Live, broadcast on 28 April, 2021. 

The Morning Live crew visited the Faculty of Dentistry, Oral & Craniofacial Sciences to discover how their research helped stop the spread of COVID-19 during the pandemic during dental treatments, and how investment into simulation haptic machines enabled our students to continue their development out of the clinic, and progress as safe beginners to graduate as dentists. 

Find out more and watch the clip here (from 24.40)

morning-live-simtocare

 

 

Simulation news

Tooth morphology app technology in use

26 November 2019

Tooth Morphology 2019

App technology allows students to explore tooth morphology in 3D simulation