Medit’s T500 scanner prides itself on its industry-leading scan speed. It scans an arch within 12 seconds while most other similar scanner types complete the task in 24 seconds. At first glance you think, “Wow! That is impressive. It’ll save me a lot of time.” But then you take a second look and ask, “Is 12 seconds really all that much time saved?” We are here to assure you that the time saved will actually be a benefit to you and the laboratory in the bigger picture and long-run.
Let us dive into a hypothetical situation. Before we begin we must clarify that the time saved is only time saved on machine scanning time; the total time the machine is being used to scan.
We begin with an assumption that on average, a lab technician has up to 10 cases per 8-hour work day, working five days a week. With the T500’s 12-second scanning time, that would end up being roughly 8 hours saved per year if you scanned each case only once. Let’s make another assumption and say there are times you need to rescan the case, so on average, you take 1.5 scans per case. This would leave you with 12 hours saved per year for one technician’s work.
As a single technician, this would only account for a day and a half of workdays for the lab. However, increase the lab size to 10 technicians completing the same average amount of cases per technician and now the lab is being saved 120 hours per year, or 3 weeks. And that is only considering the passive scanning time.
As you can imagine, the saved time grows to even greater numbers the bigger the lab. A 100-person lab would save 30 weeks. And labs greater than 1,000 people would, theoretically, save 12,000 hours’ worth simply on scanning time!
Now, we do admit that this is hypothetical and lab sizes and caseloads vary throughout the field; these numbers may not be representative. But the point we are trying to make is that over the course of a year or even the scanner’s lifetime, your lab will see much more time saved than the original 12-second difference. The more cases your lab deals with each year, the greater the benefits of speed become. Time adds up.
An additional benefit to saving this time is each scanner can handle more case-loads per day. If 10 technicians share two 24-second scanners, then the same 10 technicians could share a single 12-second scanner. Not only will the lab shave time off the total scan time, it could also save money from needing to purchase more scanners. This is a great cost-benefit scenario. For this blog, we did not consider features of different scanners, which can actually save you additional time.
Time is very important to everyone. Therefore, you should definitely consider the speed of the scanner when deciding which scanner is the best choice to purchase for the lab. Dental clinics aren’t the only ones to benefit from speed, your lab can too!
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