Australasian Dentist Magazine Sept-Oct 2021

Category 136 Australasian Dentist clear speak ACAS Society News W e have never experienced another subsector within dentistry that has had such incredible growth, development and popularity amongst patients, clinicians and large institutional money. Since align commercialised Invisalign™ at the start of the century, aligners have enjoyed good popularity with the general public. From a clinician perspective, the last four to six years has seen us rapidly move from the early adaptor to the early majority to now being in the cusp of entering the late majority. Coinciding with this, the mindboggling amount of investor and institutional money in aligners and aligner related companies has absolutely skyrocketed – along with major acquisitions and restructuring. To put it lightly, the whole aligner industry is changing and restructuring rapidly. Will this continual change and restructuring continue? Absolutely! ACAS will use this column to continue to provide you with regular updates on what is happening in the aligner space! After all, the clear aligner market size was estimated to be US$ 2.35 billion in 2020 and is expected to reach US$39 billion by 2031. Stock market: We thought it would be interesting to look as some aligner based companies and how they have been doing over the last six months. New listing on the HongKong stock exchange – AngelAlign on the 16th June! And didn’t it make a huge entrance! The Chinese clear aligner company surged 132% on debut! Its offer price was HK$173 at the start of the day and ended their first day at $HK401 10 months ago 12 October 2021 SDC Align Dentsply Patient based news: u The American Association of Orthodontists (AAO) has recently increased their advocacy against potential hazards of direct-to-consumer aligners. They have released toolkit full of digital material to help with the conversation. They have also created and released a 25-page “position paper” and is worth a read for all clinicians. You can find it at www.orthofacts.org u AngelAlign and Denticare have partnered up in Australia to provide financial solutions for both patient plans as well as lab-fee costs. u All major aligner companies are running social media ads and patient focussing social media accounts. It is a good idea to be aware of these as it is likely some or most of your patients are seeing them before you are. u Smile Direct Club is continuing to run a patient focussed TV/ Video campaign regarding daytime and night time aligners. They have also continued to run their SmileBus concept in the US and UK where a bus will go to regional and rural settings to provide intraoral scans for potential customers. u Invisalign is running a patient focussed “Invis is …” TV/ Video campaign and continues to partner with social media “influencers” to increase brand and product awareness. u Invisalign celebrated 10 million cases by donating $US1 million to Operation Smile for children born with cleft lip and palate Clinical based news: u AngelAlign will be releasing both a new aligner material (MasterControl S) as well as introducing Intelligent Root System to allow clinicians to visualise tooth movement during case setup as well as integration with CBCT. u Along with its major app upgrade we discussed last edition, Dental Monitoring has released a new, sleek and more versatile ScanBox Pro. They are set to be released very soon – and the feedback so far from those who have trialled it has been very good. u Align Tech (Invisalign ™) have signed a huge supply and distribution deal with Ultradent to co-brand and provide exclusive access to Opalesence PF whitening system. It will be branded “Invisalign professional whitening system – powered by Opalesence” and will be available in US in 2022. u SmileStyler also ran promotions by including free Pola u Byte, a direct-to-consumer aligner company, has been acquired by Dentsply Sirona on 31 December, 2020. The purchase price was $1.04US Billion.

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