Sameer Puri Sirona recently launched a campaign labeled "CAD CAM for Everyone." I think if you look at the photo below, you can see why they titled the campaign the way that they did.
There are essentially two types of systems that doctors who want to go digital with their restorations have a choice with. Going digital means that you no longer use impression material, that you take your images of the restorations with a digital imaging device. Now once you capture your images of the teeth, you have the option to send that information to a laboratory and have them fabricate the restorations or you can choose to mill the restorations chair side with a milling unit. Sirona now has three different imaging choices at three different price points for those clinicians that want to send their digital scans to a laboratory. The least expensive is the Apollo DI (the DI stands for Digital Impression). Priced at less than $20k the monthly payment on this system is about $350/month. This is less than what most offices spend for PVS impression. This is a great way for offices to get started with a digital impression system at a low cost. The next system is the Bluecam impression system. The Bluecam was introduced in 2009 and was the best selling digital camera for CAD CAM dentistry in the world until the Omnicam was introduced. The Bluecam is priced at about $26k and features a more robust and powerful imaging apparatus. Now both the Apollo and the Bluecam require an opaquing medium, aka powder, to cover the teeth to read the information. The powder makes the translucent teeth more opaque and allows the camera to read the teeth with ease. Powdering is not a big deal but if you don't want to powder, you have the opportunity to use the Omnicam. This is the latest offering from Sirona and is completely powder-free, in full color and offers video streaming imaging. Priced at roughly $50k, its the latest and greatest in imaging cameras. Now both the Bluecam and the Omnicam can be paired with a milling unit. The Apollo is simply a stand alone imaging system with no ability to upgrade to a milling unit. The Bluecam and Omnicam however have the choice of three different milling units. The prices are listed below in the photo but essentially the difference between the three milling units is capability and speed. The MC is a simple system that does single unit restorations and can handle blocks up to 20mm in size. No bridges, no abutments nothing fancy, just a single crown, which frankly is probably attractive to many offices out there. The next level up is the MCX. This can handle blocks up to 40mm which means bridges and it means abutments. The MCXL Practice Lab can now handle blocks up to 85mm and can mill models. The MCX is what most offices will get. The MCXL PL is meant more for laboratories milling bridge frameworks and models. Lots and lots of choices today in the world of CEREC. At $80k for a Bluecam and MCX, no longer can clinicians say that CAD CAM is too expensive. Sirona is making sure that the systems are affordable for everyone.
