Las Vegas Institute sets its sights on the world

The Las Vegas Institute for Advanced Dental Studies (LVI) has recapitalised with investment from two venture capitalists to take the brand worldwide. The new LVI Global will encompass the existing Las Vegas, Nevada, campus and expand to new divisions including LVI Products, LVI Publishing, LVI Regional Centres, LVI International, LVIdeas, LVI Distance Learning and LVI Labs.

LVI has become popular with clinicians from Australia and around the world for its innovative programs for full arch and full mouth advanced functional aesthetics and neuromuscular dentistry.

"It's an exciting time at LVI," said Dr Bill Dickerson, LVI's founder and CEO. "We've brought in partners to fund expansion into new markets and new products that will allow many more dentists to experience the education programs we offer.

"LVI is all about getting dentists excited about their profession and building their core skills to reach new levels of excellence. We are essentially teaching skills for delivering want-based rather than need-based dentistry, similar to the trend in medicine.

"We deliver programs that are unique to the world with advanced training in many areas from clinic to laboratory and the goal of LVI Global is to provide greater access to dentists worldwide."

Dr Dickerson said that over 600 dentists currently pass through the Las Vegas campus each year. Many of them will return several times a year for other programs. A number of dentists and technicians from Australia have made the pilgrimage to attend various programs and even more have attended the LVI Downunder programs hosted by the ADA (NSW Branch)'s Centre for Professional Development since 2003.

"Our current visit to Australia will more than likely be our last," Dr Dickerson said. "We're establishing a Regional Centre in Australia either in Sydney or Brisbane that will be part of one of our graduate's dental practices, delivering the Advanced Functional Aesthetics and Occlusion 1 courses two or three times a year.

"We've all really enjoyed coming to Australia to deliver the courses each year since 2003, and it's one of my professional highlights, but it's very disruptive because we've had to essentially close down the Las Vegas campus to do so."

Dr Dickerson said that Australia would be the first Regional Centre to be established outside the USA and there were several other early stage opportunities being pursued in Japan, Singapore, Italy, Switzerland and Italy. He sees the establishment of Regional Centres key in increasing the reach of LVI's teaching programs internationally.

"Many dentists can't see the return on their investment in travelling to take dramatic technique, philosophical and management-related programs, especially if they consider them to be expensive. Many will not travel nor spend the amount that LVI requires for its tuition to teach in the way we've designed our programs for excellence even though you would be hard pressed to find an LVI graduate that didn't think their return on investment was worth it.

"In 2006, we are launching around 25 Regional Centres in North America and in 2007, we hope to launch even more. They will all deliver standardised programs under the control of LVI so that it wouldn't matter where you take the programs, the content will be the same. The Regional Directors will come from our faculty of amazing clinical instructors spread all over the globe."

About LVI

About LVILVI's home base is located in its namesake city in Nevada, a few miles from the strip in the suburb of Summerlin.

The purpose-built facility covers 5,800 square metres and offers some 32 specialised programs for dentists, technicians and practice staff covering the well-known cosmetic and occlusion programs plus ortho, implants and endo as well as business management and team training.

The faculty of six dentists on staff includes Dr Dickerson, Dr Michael Miyasaki, Dr Clayton Chan, Dr Tony Tomorro, Dr Heidi Dickerson and Dr Norman Thomas. A further 20 dentists and other specialisists in their fields make-up the visiting faculty and 78 other dentists are clinical instructors.

The main building on campus features two lecture halls, a hands-on clinic featuring ten Pelton & Crane dental units in a teaching format, a high tech lecture room, a laboratory training room and a coffee bar plus LVI's corporate offices and a full working dental practice servicing the local area.

A second building includes three more large lecture halls, a second clinic featuring ten Belmont dental units and an i-CAT cone-beam dental CT scanner, a cafeteria, two working LVI-accredited dental laboratories, plus all-important room for expansion.