The City of Zurich maintains a School Dental Service (SZD) to promote the dental health of children and adolescents in the city’s schools. In addition, a team of school dental instructors provides oral and dental hygiene education to students during regular classroom visits. The SZD operates seven school dental clinics and employs over 100 staff, of which around 60 are clinical staff. Each year, 10,000 students with dental problems are treated in the school dental clinics. In total, 65,000 treatments are carried out each year.
Where is the loose tooth?
SZD was previously working with a system that had reached the end of its useful life. The new specialised application, Denteo, is expected to greatly simplify future practice management. This includes, for example, scheduling appointments and creating patient reports. Existing patient records and appointments had to be seamlessly transferred to the new application. Operation of the SZD could not be interrupted during the changeover.
The new application will be operated and maintained in the City of Zurich’s network and data centre, with no long downtime. Denteo is also intended to support the City of Zurich’s digitalisation strategy, which includes simplifying processes, increasing efficiency and professionalism, and establishing the new Kubernetes cluster.
Clean system – clean teeth
The requirements for the application were defined in an interdisciplinary working group consisting of representatives from the SZD and the City of Zurich, the Denteo team and its development partner, the Panter software agency. To meet these requirements, new functionalities were developed to complement Denteo’s core workflows. This created a win-win situation for all parties involved, as 80% of these functionalities can also be used by all other customers already using Denteo.
The agile and user-centric way in which the City of Zurich, the SZD, the Denteo team and Panter worked together contributed significantly to the success of the project. The multi-site extension ensures that more than 100 employees at seven locations can work with Denteo. With the web-based application, examinations or treatments can also be carried out at a school dental clinic other than the usual one, if necessary.
Work without gaps
The modular nature of the application means that individual modules can be updated, added to and new versions installed without affecting or even interrupting the operation of the SZD clinic.
The application is designed to access the database via a network connection. This minimises major performance issues when running the system in a virtualised environment.
Getting to the bottom of success
As the first large and complex application in a Kubernetes cluster, Denteo paves the way for further technical innovation and accelerates the digital adoption of new solutions within the city of Zurich, which now has a pioneering cloud tech stack. Denteo is based on consumer technology, usability and a cloud-first approach. This makes the application intuitive and easy to use.
Denteo and Panter attach great importance to customer-centred design. This approach puts the user’s requirements at the centre and anticipates their needs during the user journey. Denteo therefore offers all the functionalities that characterise modern dental practice software to ensure smooth and efficient processes.
”With Denteo, we have found a modern and simple solution for school dentistry. It was the right decision to introduce Denteo in our seven clinics. We are well equipped for the years ahead.
Dr. med. dent. Hubertus Van WaesHead of the School Dental Service of the City of Zurich
