There are approximately 400 Dental Hygiene teaching institutions just in the United States with a common dental lab size of 20 chairs. Because HINT has no competition this generates a potential need for 8000 systems total. This could average out to be 800 sales every year for 10 years!

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An estimated production cost for HINT (including one Instrument) is $8,000 to $11,000 parts and labor (See Notes). Assuming a MSRP from $19,900 to $35,900 this generates a potential profit between $7 million to $22 million each year for ten years!

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HINT Systems: In addition to the above 8000 systems needed for teaching institutions there are many other potential buyers of HINT. For example:

• Regional or state board clinical exam agencies may want to purchase HINT systems to determine clinical competence prior to licensure. Currently practical dental hygiene examinations are dependent on live patients and live examiners who attempt to calibrate to the best of human possibility.  The majority of dental hygiene faculty and students do not believe the current live patient system is adequate to determine clinical competence. The HINT system could be designed to enable 100% objective, consistent and reliable analysis of dental hygiene instrumentation technique on a typodont with or without calculus. As of April 2017 both the ADEA (American Dental Educators Association) and MNDHEA (Minnesota Dental Hygiene Educators Association) now support investigating alternative methods to measure clinical competence. The current live patient exam does not measure dental hygiene instrumentation directly, instead it relies on human examiners to determine if calculus removal on the live patient was "adequate", and that the dental hygienist did not cause too much tissue trauma.  When adopted by these regional exam agencies, sales at dental hygiene programs would increase, as they will want to be using the same technology to increase student pass rates. Learn more about these exams here: http://www.adha.org/resources-docs/7313_Overview_Clinical_Examinations.pdf 

• As the profession of dental hygiene continues to grow, dental hygiene students are expected to learn more and more information.  Dental hygienists are no longer expected to just "clean teeth", but rather serve in a variety of roles including patient education, community and public health, research, marketing and sales.  It is anticipated that HINT will help students develop their instrumentation skills faster and with more independence, which will enable teaching institutions to focus more on other skills needed to fulfill all the responsibilities of a dental hygienist.  This will benefit both dental hygiene education programs and the public at large.

• It is hard to estimate sales in other countries but the potential is high. For example China is rapidly expanding their dental health care and has a great need for teaching more dental hygienist. The China market alone could easily exceed the sales in the United States.

• Many Dental Instrument Manufacturers will likely purchase HINT systems for two reasons: 1.) HINT could be very helpful in the design, development and testing of their new instruments. For example it can help ensure they accurately determine the optimum Angulation and Adaptation angles for their new instrument. 2.) They may purchase HINT systems and then provide a service for continued education to help licensed dental hygienists learn and use their new instruments. This could increase their instrument sales since many dental hygienists are reluctant to stray from the instruments they were taught to use in their initial training.

• Dental offices may purchase a HINT system to help their dental hygiene employees improve existing skills (re-calibrate) and or develop new instrumentation skills.  When dental hygiene students graduate, they are considered minimally competent. It is expected that graduates will continue to develop their skills to achieve higher levels of competence when working on the job. Unfortunately this relies on self-evaluations, with perhaps some feedback from the supervising dentist. HINT would enable dental hygienists to improve their skills at a faster rate while not compromising patient care. Dental offices that provide this service (or employee perk) could attract more and better dental hygienist. Advertising this continued education and competency testing and how it improves the quality of their practice could also attract more patients for that dental office (more business).

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HINT Instruments: Instrument sales could continue indefinitely providing another long term income avenue. For example:

• It is expected HINT will ship with one dental hygiene instrument selected by the institution. However common dental hygiene instrument setups include at least seven different instruments providing another avenue of income. Different regions in the United States prefer different types of dental hygiene instruments. Research is currently being conducted to assess these preferences and help determine which instruments would be the most popular.

• As new types of instruments are invented and introduced by Instrument manufactures the existing HINT users will want them to be available for HINT.

• There will be additional sales to replace worn out and broken (abused) instruments.

• There should also be a demand for a service that will refurbish and recalibrate instruments and typodonts.

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HINT Software:

• A Software Update service (of various lengths) could also be sold to ensure bug free operation.

• Every so often a major new software release could be sold with new and improved features. ​

• Every so often new hardware could be introduced to provide additional features.

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Why will dental hygiene programs want to invest in HINT technology?

The Commission of Dental Accreditation is the current accrediting body for dental hygiene.  State licensure for dental hygienists is dependent on graduating from an accredited dental hygiene program.  Standards within this accreditation process REQUIRE programs to demonstrate how they are determining competence with dental hygiene instrumentation, along with evidence as to how they are calibrating faculty.  Additionally standards require programs to provide remedial education to any dental hygiene students who are struggling to develop adequate instrumentation skills.  HINT provides the perfect answer to address ALL of these standards.

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NOTES:

• The cost for the major items like magnetic or optical tracking and Instruments is known but many other items can only be estimated at this time. The cost to mount and calibrate Sensors in the Instruments and the size, type and cost of a manikin are two of the bigger unknowns.

• This cost analysis does not include any NRE cost or amortizing that development cost over some period of time.

• Critical design objectives and features for HINT have been completed and more are being developed (Patent 11,699,358 B2). However writing all of the C++ code to implement those features has been limited so it can be done in the most cost effective way by the OEM. The proof of concept prototype code was developed by modifying sample code from the vendor to include the Angulation and Adaptation calculations.

• To be more cost effective, the mechanical parts and subsystems (like the manikin) have not been developed so parts and assemblies already designed and available to an OEM can be used to keep the cost lower.