Some users may experience temporary issues accessing parts of the site. Thanks for your patience.
- Office Hours Mon - Fri 9:00 am – 4:00 pm EST
Did you know that three-quarters of restorative dentistry cases would benefit from pre-restorative orthodontic repositioning before the first prep is made?
And yet, according to research cited by Dr. Andrew Reingold in a recent Dawson Academy webinar, only 1 in 100 patients actually move forward with it.
But the issue isn’t necessarily a clinical one. Many dentists trained in complete dentistry understand the case for repositioning. The real gap is a communication problem – and particularly, a visualization issue.
When a conversation lives entirely in clinical language, most patients can’t find themselves in it. They may hear a recommendation, but they don’t feel it – at least, not in a way that they feel empowered to move forward with confidence.
Smile Architect, Align Technology’s AI-driven digital smile design platform, is designed to help close this distance. But as Dr. Reingold makes clear, the tool is only as powerful as the philosophy behind it.
And that philosophy is unmistakably Dawson: you never begin comprehensive treatment without first visualizing where you’re going.
To understand the potential that new tools bring to the dentist-patient experience, it helps to know the capabilities of the tools themselves.
Smile Architect uses advanced artificial intelligence technology to create a personalized smile design for each patient. By analyzing facial features, tooth structure, and other factors, it can generate a digital simulation of how the patient’s teeth will look after treatment.
Smile Architect isn’t just for clear aligner cases — it’s built to support every treatment modality, from single restorations to full-mouth rehabs.
But what really matters here isn’t the tool itself – it’s how Smile Architect helps tell the emotional story of any treatment’s potential to specific patients.
And this matters because when you can’t help a client emotionally connect with their options, they may not feel equipped to take the best next step.
In the webinar, Dr. Reingold describes a case that illustrates the failure to help translate a diagnosis into a proper presentation.
Dr. Reingold told of a patient named Molly who came into the practice with broken bonding on her centrals. She also had a history of orthodontic relapse and signs of occlusal instability.
This particular scenario was one that Dr. Reingold admitted was his own experience. He recognized the signs of a system under stress – a bite that needed to be addressed before anything restorative could hold long-term.
While he had the data and reasoning to make a clinical decision, he didn’t have a way to help Molly feel it.
To help, Dr. Reingold showed Molly a cartoon rendering of her tooth movement. This did help her conceptually understand what was happening in her mouth – but she felt nothing personally. Instead of starting Invisalign treatments, she left scheduling her next hygiene appointment.
As Dr. Reingold puts it, he failed the case presentation. Not the diagnosis or the treatment plan. But the conversation that could have helped Molly take the right next step toward true healing.
This is the planning failure that Pete Dawson spent a career addressing. You don’t begin comprehensive treatment without a game plan. That game plan must include visualizing the end result and every step that leads to it.
When Dr. Reingold came back to Molly at her hygiene visit, he had something different. He had been beta testing Smile Architect between appointments, and he had run her case through it.
Using Smile Architect, Dr. Reingold created a photorealistic simulation layered directly onto the patient’s photograph. Smile Architect’s simulations are built from the patient’s 3D intraoral scan data and mapped against more than 60 facial metrics built from over 17 million smiles.
When Molly saw it, the reaction was immediate. She was ready to take the next step and was scheduling the process before she left the office. Same clinical recommendation, but completely different outcome — because this time, she could see herself in the result.
This is the connection between emotion and clinical expertise in case acceptance. Patients don’t make decisions based on clinical logic alone. They make them based on whether they can envision the outcome and trust that it will happen.
And with Smile Architect, dentists have a tool that helps bridge those two in the same conversation. But the impact of a complete digital workflow goes beyond the case acceptance conversation.
Consider what it looks like when the infrastructure is in place, and something goes wrong.
Another excellent example Dr. Reingold shares is that of classically trained singer Guadalupe, who came to Reingold’s Manhattan practice requesting a single implant. But what looked simple on the surface revealed a system problem when the digital workflow was applied.
The rotation of a lower tooth was directly in the way of where the ideal implant restoration needed to sit. And the software made that undeniable in a way that verbal explanation never could.
In the days between record collection and aligner delivery, Guadalupe’s temporary flipper shattered – and on the morning of a Lincoln Center performance.
Because her tooth design already existed in the digital file, the team was able to extract the design and print a replacement flipper in the office. She picked it up at lunch and performed that night.
That’s what a complete digital workflow looks like when it matters most.
You can deliver poor-quality dentistry more efficiently with digital tools if you haven’t started with a complete treatment philosophy. The speed doesn’t save you from the wrong destination.
Instead, Smile Architect gives Dawson’s framework — treat the system, not the tooth; visualize the endpoint before you begin; plan before you prep — a digital home.
The workflow runs from facial photo capture through a full intraoral scan, virtual articulator mounting, digital smile design, and lab communication, all in one integrated platform.
The AI-generated design gives the dentist a target. An ideal restorative envelope that defines exactly where the natural teeth need to land for the preparations to be as conservative as possible.
For years, Pete Dawson taught that you never begin comprehensive treatment without first seeing where you’re going.
But for decades, that principle lived in study models and the imagination of a well-trained clinician. The tools were physical but needed to evolve to keep up with modern technology (and modern patient expectations!).
With tools such as Smile Architect, the end result is now visible before the first appointment is over. The same 3D data that drives the treatment plan drives the patient conversation.
It’s one system, built around one principle that hasn’t changed at all.
Want to learn even more? Watch the full webinar with Dr. Reingold and explore upcoming Dawson Academy programs at thedawsonacademy.com.
ADA CERP is a service of the American Dental Association to assist dental professionals in identifying quality providers of continuing dental education. ADA CERP does not approve or endorse individual courses or instructors, nor does it imply acceptance of credit hours by boards of dentistry.
Concerns or complaints about a CE provider may be directed to the provider or to the Commission for Continuing Education Provider Recognition at ADA.org/CERP.
