Dentech panels focus on driving innovation, promoting global oral health
ADA Forsyth Institute conference took place Oct. 24-25 in Massachusetts
Leaders from research, industry, academia and venture capital gathered for ADA Forsyth dentech 2024, where panels focused on driving innovation and promoting oral health globally.
The oral health technology innovation conference, hosted by the ADA Forsyth Institute, took place Oct. 24-25 in Somerville, Massachusetts. The ADA Forsyth Institute was formed in October 2023 when the Forsyth Institute joined with the American Dental Association’s Science & Research Institute to become one research organization.
One of the panels at dentech highlighted how the ADA and ADA Forsyth are empowering innovation. Ahead of the conference, the ADA announced the creation of ADA Corporate Ventures to pursue commercial applications of oral health research conducted by ADA Forsyth. ADA Corporate Ventures, which houses two new entities in the form of an LLC and a C corporation, will allow the ADA to create new partnerships, new companies and other ventures with third parties.
“We want to be part of a group that’s coming together that leads a charge to change people’s lives,” ADA Executive Director Raymond A. Cohlmia, D.D.S., said of the ADA’s relationship with ADA Forsyth.
Another panel addressed global innovation and investment. During the discussion, ADA Forsyth CEO Wenyuan Shi, Ph.D., emphasized that the institute wants to help dental innovators be successful.
The ADA and ADA Forsyth announced during dentech the launch of the ADA Forsyth Professional Dental Products Certified Program, a new gold standard for professional-grade dental products. Known as AFI Certified, the program is designed to provide dental professionals with evidence-based data to help ensure products meet ADA-approved standards for patient care. AFI Certified is slated to launch in fall 2025.
“If you are a company with an existing product, there [are] so many ways we can help you. We can test it and certify it to meet ADA standards, and we can really promote the product once we know it’s a good one — through education, through JADA, through the ADA annual conference. There [are] so many things we can do because we want to get rid of the snake oils, and we want to make the real winner the true winner,” Dr. Shi said. “Now, for all the startups … Forsyth has so many resources to help you, from the incubators to clinical research center to regulatory support, because we really want to do all the things we could.”
The conference also featured a panel focused on developing a national oral health initiative. The panelists emphasized the importance of setting national oral health goals and creating a unified strategy to achieve them.
“Oral health is health, and it needs to be treated as such. The only way for that to happen is a combined effort,” said ADA President Brett Kessler, D.D.S.
Natalia Chalmers, D.D.S., Ph.D., chief dental officer for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, said a national oral health strategy would recognize that oral health is important for children, adults and seniors and align stakeholders to work toward certain goal posts.
“In the U.S., if you ask, ‘What is the national oral health strategy?’ no one can say it because we don’t have it,” Dr. Chalmers said. “So ultimately, wouldn’t it be great if all of us — with the innovation, with the providers, with the research — come together and say, ‘The goal is every kid at 6 not to have a single cavity’? We have to do a lot of things right in the delivery system, the provider system, the research system, to achieve that goal, but I believe it’s possible. And so having such a national oral health strategy could help align us to get there.”
Another panel aimed to demystify the Food and Drug Administration’s regulatory process for developing devices, biologics and drugs. For more from dentech, visit forsyth.org.
