Envision the Future of Dental Education

Dental education is experiencing a period of rapid transformation driven by changing student demographics, integration of digital dentistry and artificial intelligence (AI), and evolving models of care. Recent research highlights growth in the adoption of digital dentistry and AI; however, students are concerned that current curricula are lagging behind technological and clinical practice realities.¹

Collectively, these pressures highlight the unmet need for educational strategies that are needs‑driven, person‑centered, and adaptable to match our evolving field. How can we inspire and engage the next generation? The rise in structured innovation frameworks, notably the Biodesign Innovation Process, helps align education programs with student needs.^2,3

What Is the Biodesign Innovation Process?

Established biodesign and healthtech innovation programs offer a model for rigorous training of healthcare innovators in dental and medical education.

The curriculum centered around the Biodesign Innovation Process occurs in three phases:

1. Identify
2. Invent
3. Implement

Each is designed to provide a scaffold for moving from observation to impact.

In the identify phase, trainees conduct immersive and structured observations across clinical settings to catalog unmet needs affecting patients, clinicians, and systems. These observations are converted into concise need statements that prioritize clinical impact, feasibility, and value.

The invent phase focuses on generation and prototyping of multiple solution concepts in an iterative approach while considering regulatory and economic constraints.

In the implement phase, promising concepts are advanced through piloting and stakeholder engagement, with attention to sustainability, value creation, and real‑world adoption.

For dental education, the key insight of this framework is not the specific technological outputs but the reproducible, needs‑first mindset to build education innovators and thinkers.

Practical Applications for Innovators in Dental Education

Biodesign and design-thinking frameworks offer complementary lenses through which, as a community, we can evaluate entrenched structures and re-imagine strategies to inspire and engage the next generation.⁴ These initiatives do not require a comprehensive curricular redesign.⁴ They represent steps to building a culture of innovation grounded in practical needs to enhance student engagement and inspire action.

Next Steps to Develop a Culture of Innovation

Practical starting points include:

• Needs‑finding in authentic settings. Develop structured observation and needs-assessment exercises into dental schools and real-world practice settings to identifying patient, learner, and system‑level challenges.
• Biodesign Innovation workshops. Introduce short, faculty‑facilitated sessions in which students empathize with specific user groups (eg, dental students, residents, support staff) with goals to define focused needs and conceptualize potential solutions.
• Innovation electives or societies. Create electives or extracurricular programs in which student teams engage with innovators and leaders to explore state-of-art technologies and processes.
• Implementation‑focused capstone projects. Invite senior students or residents to pair proposed innovations with basic implementation plans, including stakeholder mapping, simple outcome measures, and feasibility considerations.

Re-Imagining the Future

Integrating the Biodesign Innovation Process into dental education offers a unique opportunity to evolve curricula and inspire the next generation. By training students and residents to systematically identify unmet needs, codesign solutions with patients and colleagues, and thoughtfully implement change, our profession can better align educational outcomes with the realities of contemporary practice and future expectations.

References

1. Guo R, Zhang Y, Li W, Liu D, Hu W. Digital intelligence in dental education: a bibliometric analysis. Int Dent J. 2026;76:109495.
2. Chuenjitwongsa S, Amir LR, Jessani A, Samaranayake LP, Osathanon T. Integrating design thinking into dental education. Front Oral Health. 2025;6:1547335.
3. Yock PG, Zenios S, Makower J, et al. Biodesign: The Process of Innovating Medical Technologies. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Cambridge University Press; 2015.
4. Nath S, Chung D, Yang J, Wu DT. Piloting an innovation society as a tool to supplement dental curricula. J Dent Educ. 2023;87 Suppl 1:911-913.

From Decisions in Dentistry. September/October 2026;12(2):6-9.