Managing dental equipment: an everyday problem

I spent five years as IT director of a group of 15 dental clinics. I set up the clinics and kept them running: the infrastructure, the workstations, the dental and imaging software, and the relationship with the providers who install and maintain the dental and X-ray equipment.

That is how I saw the equipment come and go. An X-ray sensor replaced without anyone noting which one, or when. A panoramic unit whose last check you hunt for on the day you need it. The information always existed somewhere: a binder, a spreadsheet, a mailbox, or the memory of someone who had since left.

Five years working alongside dental assistants, dentists and clinic management is where you learn what software has to do to actually be used. That is what Romaldent does: information about the equipment lives in one place, up to date and tracked.

I spent 18 years selling dental equipment, then 4 years buying it. At Dentsply Sirona, I equipped practices and clinics all over France, then went on to manage key accounts for private clinic groups and mutual insurers’ clinics.

I then moved into purchasing, as purchasing director of a group of 15 dental clinics. There, I discovered an essential issue: how hard it is to follow equipment through its life cycle, and then to know what was done with it. Fifteen clinics, hundreds of items of equipment, mandatory maintenance, traceability and medical device vigilance obligations, and the information scattered across a binder, three spreadsheets and a mailbox. On the day you need the evidence, you do find it in the end. It takes three days or more.

That is what made me decide to co-found Romaldent: the tool I was missing to know where each item of equipment stands, what has been done and what is coming due, to be able to prove it, and to plan its replacement.