Nobel Biocare World Tour underway

Nobel Biocare's most ambitious educational program yet commenced in Frankfurt, Germany in early March as the first leg of a 17 country World Tour. Ahead of its arrival in Sydney on August 2-4, 2006, we spoke to Dr Patrick Henry about what to expect.

"Nobel Biocare has been the leader in the development of dental implant technology from day one and now, with the staging of the World Tour, they are making it clear that they want to take a lead role in training and education around the world as well," said Dr Henry, the 'father' of dental implantology in Australia and part of the Nobel Biocare World Tour organising committee.

"The World Tour is a very ambitious educational program where Nobel Biocare are essentially offering the exact same scientific program in 17 countries around the world. Now obviously, the leading speakers on implant dentistry cannot spend a year travelling to those 17 places and still meet their university and private practice commitments, so while the content of the program will be the same in each location, there is a faculty of people to deliver it.

"The outcome is that the level of education and the subject matter will be delivered in all of these countries without any interpretation. The exact same program content will be presented at the same level everywhere. There will be no watering down in countries that may be perceived as less advanced than others. It will be the same across the board."

Dr Henry said that the other constant will be the level of audiovisual presentation and Nobel Biocare had established a dedicated department to ensure it is replicated in each location.

"The logistics of the World Tour are extensive and several presentations will involve surgery and clinical demonstrations live via satellite. Nobel Biocare perfected this technique and delivered it to great effect at the World Conference in Las Vegas last year so this technology will feature prominently."

Dr Henry said that importantly, the World Tour had something for everyone in the dental team including dental technicians, chairside clinical assistants and practice managers and each member of the clinical team will have their own sessions to participate in as well as opportunities to interact together.

"Where the World Tour is really breaking new ground is that the format of the program has been structured by educational experts from around the world. The learning outcomes will be monitored and studied carefully to see how this type of educational program can continue to be improved in the future.

"This is something that has never been attempted before at such a serious level. We're talking about the foremost dental educators from around the world from within the universities that are experts in assessing outcomes of educational programs using all of their tools and methodologies to plan the best possible way to communicate with all members of the dental team. It's an exciting concept."

Dr Henry has particular involvement in three locations for the World Tour - India, Hong Kong and of course Australia. The three conferences will be virtually identical with exactly the same subject matter but presented by different people chosen from the panel.

"Because Australia came into the field of dental implants very early, our clinicians here have a very good depth and breadth of experience. As a result, there are a lot of Australians involved in the World Tour and live surgeries from Australia will be on show to the world."

Dr Henry said that Day One of the World Tour is a pre-conference program. Day Two of the conference is designed as a general program delivered in a main auditorium. Day Three will continue the auditorium program as well as include breakout sessions to focus on specific areas and to cater to individual levels of practitioner expertise. The last half of the final day will focus on future developments in implant dentistry.

"The final 25% of the program will be devoted to the many new developments that are coming up in dentistry, including further improvements in surface technologies, bone augmentation procedures, bone morphogenic proteins and all sorts of other prosthetic developments to make the restoration of implants simpler, easier and more predictable."