Rural

Oral health in remote areas

Presently, regional dental services for isolated communities are often restricted to emergency and basic preventative procedures. The restrictions are caused by the financial and time costs associated with establishing, operating and maintaining stationary or semi-stationary dental clinics that are based at schools or community centres and mobile, vehicle based clinics.

Stationary clinics can be unattended for long periods and damage from vandalism and intermittent usage can be significant. Mobile clinics, on the other hand, expose expensive equipment to stress that they are not designed to tolerate. Both of these options are very expensive to establish and to operate and do not address the cost or lost opportunities that result in sending a technician to the site or in returning the equipment to a capital city for repair.

Equipment downtime results in some members of the community missing out of the oral health care that they need and in increased pressure on regional health care professionals.

Introducing DentalMan

DentalMan's Compact System offers new operating possibilities to regional dental services with the aim of facilitating first class oral health care provisioning by providing field dentists with less demanding equipment and hopefully a less stressful environment.

DentalMan alleviates some of the challenges facing the stakeholders in regional dental care by providing equipment that:

• has very low operating, support and maintainence costs,
• is the most portable available, without functional compromises,
• has been especially designed to handle the extraordinary demands of mobile dentistry, and
• has a modular, low weight design that is backed up by DentalMan's commitment to industry leading support services.

Cost Reductions

Since DentalMan equipment has been specifically developed to have no dependence upon any fixed infrastructure, the costs in establishing and maintaining support services are kept to an absolute minimum. The full featured DentalMan Compact System offers:

• a unique integrated direct air compressor with no pressure chamber,
• a built-in water tank,
• a battery that provides six hours of constant operating time and that
• can be charged from any 12-24Vdc, 110-250Vac power supply or even a Solar Panel.

True Mobility

A key achievement in the development of the DentalMan Compact is it's integrated direct air compressor. Being able to deliver air at 33psi and water at 50mL/min while weighing less than 25kg ensures that DentalMan equipment remains firmly at the top of it's class.

To the mobile dental service, this means that investment in specialist vehicles and other infrastructure is no longer required. In fact, the DentalMan Compact System together with the DentalMan PowerSuction will take up less boot space than the Dentist's clothing.

From an Occupational Health and Safety point of view, DentalMan's low weight and sensible carrying cases are excellent. The cases feature multiple grab points and roller wheels to make transport as simple as possible.

While it's portability is the industry leader, DentalMan equipment does not compromise on function. The DentalMan Compact incorporates a triple syringe, ultrasonic scaler, curing light and an e-type (or IntraLux) electric micromotor and provides a complete clinical range to the mobile dentist.

Handles the Knocks

Dental equipment used by mobile services must handle the most demanding of environments. DentalMan's equipment has been developed with this in mind and, when packed properly, will handle more vibrational and thermal stress than conventional equipment. In other words, DentalMan kit has been engineered from the ground up to be a mobile solution. It is not just generic equipment that has been put in a case with wheels and a handle.

The modular design of the equipment is also unique. Each component can be quickly and easily removed and replaced by anyone. Should a module fail, a specially trained technician is not required make repairs and this also allows DentalMan to send a replacement module in the shortest time possible to where it is needed.

The benefits of this excellence in design are two-fold: the equipment is much less likely to fail in transport and if it does, the modular design ensures that down-time and it's associated pain is kept to an absolute minimum.

Conclusion

Providing oral health care to regional and remote areas is a significant challenge. In the past, providing the facilities to allow dental care has been expensive to set-up, operate and to maintain. These costs are compounded by the demanding environment that exposes equipment to conditions that they were not designed to tolerate. When equipment fails, it is costly and inconvenient to send a technician on-site or to return the equipment to a capital city for repair.

DentalMan equipment has been designed and engineered to be used in these demanding conditions. The equipment requires no special infrastructure and has been built to last in these environments while being supported by an industry leading support service.