Publisher’s Letter: If You Haven’t Switched — The Time Is Now

You’re behind the curve if you’re not using digital tools in your practice today.

If that feels like a controversial statement to you, consider the numbers: Glidewell is the biggest lab in America with about 80,000 dentists working with us each year. So far in 2026, 75% of the impressions sent to us have been digital. And millions more cases have skipped the lab entirely in recent years and have been milled chairside with the glidewell.io^™ In-Office Solution. 

We’re well beyond the days where digital tools were only for early adopters or the tech obsessed. Today your everyday dentist is digital. He or she might not be all in on chairside milling or 3D printing yet, but the typical provider is scanning patients and using a digitally driven restorative workflow.

While the data proves that we’ve truly arrived in the era of digital dentistry, it doesn’t tell the full story. That’s why we’re dedicating this issue of Chairside^® magazine to digital dentistry — to share the undeniable benefits that dentists and patients experience daily because of these technologies, to show just how straightforward it is to implement into your practice.

In my six decades in dentistry, the thing I’ve found to be most true is that change is constant. It’s smart to have healthy skepticism about new developments and the bold marketing claims that surround them, but there comes a point where data can’t be ignored in good faith. And that’s where digital is today.

Not convinced? I’m set on making the digital change as easy as possible for every dentist in the U.S. That’s why we recently opened our second education center — this one in Raleigh, North Carolina. It joins our Southern California facility and means virtually all dentists in the Lower 48 can reach a Glidewell training center with just a three-hour flight or less. You can join us, get hands on with the latest digital tools, and be back home tomorrow.

More than 4,000 dentists each year are already doing exactly that in our West Coast education center. I’m truly excited to bring these same opportunities to dentists east of the Mississippi.