“Il n’y a rien dans ce monde qui n’ait un moment decisif”
(“There is nothing in this world that does not have a decisive moment”)
Cardinal de Retz and later, Henri Cartier-Bresson
(via Alan Stevens)
Filed under: Blog, Quote | Leave a comment »
The Monday Morning Quote #411
Posted on March 20, 2017 by Alun Rees
“To achieve great things, two things are needed:
a plan and not quite enough time.”
Filed under: Blog, Quote | Leave a comment »
To Prevent Rheumatoid Arthritis, Look Past the Joints to the Gums. In Case You Missed It- TGBSL#27
Posted on March 19, 2017 by Alun Rees
To Prevent Rheumatoid Arthritis, Look Past the Joints to the Gums
The mouth may seem like a strange place to search for a culprit in a disease that primarily affects the joints. But a recent collaboration by a group of multidisciplinary researchers suggests that one type of oral bacteria may be an important trigger in about half of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) cases. Continues
Some Neanderthals were vegetarians who used natural forms of penicillin and aspirin as medicine
‘Apparently, Neandertals possessed a good knowledge of medicinal plants … the use of antibiotics would be very surprising, as this is more than 40,000 years before we developed penicillin’ Continues & here
Root canal treatments overhauled through new device to detect untreated bacteria
A new method of detecting bacteria during root canal treatments could eradicate the need for follow up appointments and prevent treatments from failing, according to a study published in the Journal of Dental Research. The SafeRoot device, created by a team of researchers at King’s College London, enables rapid bacterial detection inside the root canal, ensuring the procedure has been successful and reducing the need for tooth extraction or surgical intervention. Continues.
Tooth loss linked to an increased risk of dementia
In a study of 1566 community-dwelling Japanese elderly who were followed for 5 years, the risk of developing dementia was elevated in individuals with fewer remaining teeth. Continues
Can oestrogen therapy lead to healthier teeth and gums?
A new study finds links between estrogen therapy and reducing tooth and gum diseases in postmenopausal women. Estrogen therapy is known to help women manage a variety of menopause-related issues: improving bone density and heart health and reducing hot flashes, to name a few. As such, many women choose to take hormones to treat the numerous symptoms associated with menopause. Continues
Review confirms link between drug use and poor dental health
A new review published online in the scientific journal Addiction has found that dental patients with substance use disorders have more tooth decay and periodontal disease than the general population, but are less likely to receive dental care. With drug use increasing by approximately three million new users each year, this is a problem that won’t disappear anytime soon. Continues
Filed under: Blog, Dentistry, Health, Research | Leave a comment »
The Weekend Read – Steal like an artist by Austin Kleon
Posted on March 18, 2017 by Alun Rees
A present from my brother in 2012, this is a small book with a big message that punches well above its weight.
The concept behind Steal Like An Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative is that we learn by copying.
The chapter titles are to the point and act as a great guide:
- Steal Like an Artist. (All creative work builds on what came before. Nothing is completely original.)
- Don’t wait until you know who you are to get started. (Fake it ’til you make it.)
- Write the book you want to read. (Don’t write what you know, write what you like.)
- Use your hands. (Step away from the screen – your hands are your original digital devices.)
- Side projects and hobbies are important. (Don’t worry about unity from piece to piece, what unifies all your work is that you made it.)
- The Secret: Do good work and share it with people. (Put stuff on the internet)
- Geography is no longer our master. (You don’t have to live anywhere other than where you are to start connecting with the world you want to be in)
- Be nice. (The world is a small town).
- Be Boring. (It’s the only way to get work done).
- Creativity is subtraction. (Choose what to leave out)
In respect to the book (and because I am short of time) I am quoting from the review on the excellent Actionable Books – do yourself a favour, look them up & subscribe. Weekly reviews of interesting business books.
What completely resonated with me, as I pondered the notion that it all has been done before, is that this idea is actually very freeing. It removes the “burden of trying to be completely original.” No pressure. Can’t come up with that new product? Pulling your hair out to develop the next best viral sensation? Trying to figure out what to write about next? No pressure. It has already been done before. So, go look at the best of what has been done before and steal from it.
Available from The Book Depository
Filed under: 7 Pillars of Successful Dental Business, Blog, Books | Leave a comment »
Please help Dentaid provide dental care for refugees in Greece
Posted on March 17, 2017 by Alun Rees
This is Samos refugee camp. Around 1000 people live here after fleeing war, persecution, poverty and violence. No dental treatment has been available and people are suffering terrible toothache. Many refugees are on liquid diets and can’t eat because their dental pain is so severe. International dental charity Dentaid is determined to help.
Over the coming months Dentaid is sending teams of volunteer dental professionals to provide emergency dental care in the camps in Samos and neighbouring Lesvos.
Dentaid needs your help to provide dental equipment, medicines and other materials for the clinics.
Make a difference with dentistry.
Find out more about Dentaid’s volunteering trips to Lesvos and Samos at Dentaid.org
Filed under: Blog, Dentaid, Dentistry, Personal | Leave a comment »
Why Dentistry Is Separate From Medicine – and the possible consequences
Posted on March 14, 2017 by Alun Rees
Why Dentistry Is Separate From Medicine
The divide sometimes has devastating consequences.
Doctors are doctors, and dentists are dentists, and never the twain shall meet. Whether you have health insurance is one thing, whether you have dental insurance is another. Your doctor doesn’t ask you if you’re flossing, and your dentist doesn’t ask you if you’re exercising. In America, we treat the mouth separately from the rest of the body, a bizarre situation that Mary Otto explores in her new book, Teeth: The Story of Beauty, Inequality, and the Struggle for Oral Health in America.
Specializing in one part of the body isn’t what’s weird—it would be one thing if dentists were like dermatologists or cardiologists. The weird thing is that oral care is divorced from medicine’s education system, physician networks, medical records, and payment systems, so that a dentist is not just a special kind of doctor, but another profession entirely.
But the body didn’t sign on for this arrangement, and teeth don’t know that they’re supposed to keep their problems confined to the mouth. This separation leads to real consequences: Dental insurance is often even harder to get than health insurance (which is not known for being a cakewalk), and dental problems left untreated worsen, and sometimes kill. Anchoring Otto’s book is the story of Deamonte Driver, a 12-year-old boy from Maryland who died from an untreated tooth infection that spread to his brain. His family did not have dental benefits, and he ended up being rushed to the hospital for emergency brain surgery, which wasn’t enough to save him.
A thought provoking read which continues here.
Filed under: Blog, Books, Dentistry, Health | Leave a comment »
The Monday Morning Quote #410
Posted on March 13, 2017 by Alun Rees
“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”
Max Planck, German quantum theorist and Nobel Prize winner.
Filed under: Blog, Coaching, Quote | Leave a comment »
Robotics on the way…
Posted on March 9, 2017 by Alun Rees
Dr Marc Cooper a dentist turned business consultant, understands all elements of the business of dentistry. Never afraid to be provocative and often way ahead of the curve, his newsletter is amongst my top ten regular must reads.
He has written in recent times about the transformational nature of technology and the growth of robotics and AI with a newsletter, “The End of Dentists as We Know Them” where he quoted from Susskind and Susskind’s HBR paper:
Our inclination is to be sympathetic to this transformative use of technology, not least because today’s professions (medicine and dentistry), as currently organized, are creaking. They are increasingly unaffordable, opaque, and inefficient, and they fail to deliver value evenly across our communities. In most advanced economies, there is concern about the spiraling costs of health care, the lack of access to justice, the inadequacy of current educational systems, and the failure of auditors to recognize and stop various financial scandals. The professions need to change. Technology may force them to.”
He has followed that up today:
….below is a copy of a Patent Application that is in process and its associated claim document. Like everything else, from computers to man-powered flight, when an idea whose time has come arrives, numbers of people in different parts of the globe work on it simultaneously.
…..over the next decade, robotics in dentistry will play a larger and larger role, until dentists become computer operators not dental clinicians.
It doesn’t matter if you believe me or not, the future doesn’t care about right and wrong. The future is impartial to “what already is.”
Patent Application – http://www.sumobrain.com/patents/wipo/Medical-robotic-works-station/WO2016022347A1.pdf
Patent Claims– PDF
one of his correspondents had sent him this:
Robotics for implant surgery gets FDA clearance.
Filed under: Blog, Business, Clinical, Dentistry | Leave a comment »
Bad news for online advertisers – you’ve been ’ad – John Naughton
Posted on March 7, 2017 by Alun Rees
The old line was, “the trouble with advertising is that only 50% of it works and you don’t know which 50%”.
My concerns about digital marketing are not about the process per se but rather about the number of people who claim to be “experts”, I think my Linkedin connect requests have become 50% “I’m a digital marketer and I have an innovative solution for dentists” and 50% “the rest”. These new contacts usually tell me that dentists aren’t switched on enough, they don’t return their calls and don’t they want to gain “limitless” (I kid you not) new patients (that’s if they can remember to call them patients). I try to explain that as a professional marketer they really ought to take some time to research their own market, I then also tell them that no I don’t see patients myself and I’m sorry I am not going to introduce them to all my clients just because they are obviously young and oh so clever.
I am reminded of the people who were in financial services at one point selling endowment policies that messed up the financial planning for many.
You see I’m an old fashioned “duct-tape marketing” fan who thinks that you should use as many free or ‘as low-cost as possible’ systems before putting your hands in your pocket. I’m choosing to be deliberately Luddite here but I suggest that you apply a coat of scepticism before parting with cash. (Never forget that Facebook is an advertising company with ambitions to rule the world by deciding what news it decides you will read.)
John Naughton’s piece in the Observer on Sunday hit the nail on the head as usual. I particularly like the phrase surveillance capitalism.
There is, alas, no such thing as a free lunch. The trouble with digital technology, though, is that for a long time it encouraged us to believe that this law of nature had been suspended. Take email as an example. In the old days, if you wanted to send a friend a postcard saying: “Just thinking of you”, you had to find a postcard and a pen, write the message, find a stamp and walk to a postbox. Two days later – if you were lucky – your card reached its destination. But with email you just type the message, press “send” and in an instant it is delivered to your friend’s inbox, sometimes at the other end of the world. No stamp, no expense, no hassle.
It is the same with using the cloud to store our digital photographs, browse the web, download podcasts, watch YouTube Lolcats, look up Wikipedia and check our Facebook newsfeeds. All free.
Well, up to a point. Most of us eventually tumbled to the realisation that if the service is free, we are the product. Or, rather, our personal data and the digital trails we leave on the web are the product. The data is sliced, diced and sold to advertisers in a vast, hidden – and totally unregulated – system of high-speed, computerised auctions that ensure each user can be exposed to ads that precisely match their interests, demographics and gender identity.
And this is done with amazing, fine-grained resolution: Facebook, for example, holds 98 data points on every user. Welcome to the world of “surveillance capitalism”.
Filed under: 7 Pillars of Successful Dental Business, Blog, Business, Marketing | Leave a comment »
The Monday Morning Quote #409
Posted on March 6, 2017 by Alun Rees
“It is better to go through life making mistakes than to sit still and do nothing because you are afraid to make mistakes.”
Filed under: Blog, Personal, Quote | Leave a comment »
