Woman with new dental implants
With a growing older population, increasing demand for cosmetic surgery, and improved 3D technologies, it’s no surprise that a startup is focused on making dental implants simpler, safer, and faster. The technique allows your dentist to do the procedure, reducing the cost of dental implants.
The standard procedure for replacing a tooth is a dental implant, which requires the clinician to drill a hole in the patient’s jawbone and then screw in a threaded titanium implant. The process is complex and expensive. According to the American College of Prosthodontists, approx 178 million people the US is missing at least one tooth. Fear of the implant procedure and the cost are two main reasons that only a fraction of those who are missing a tooth get an implant.
Using 3D technology, her husband, Dr. Todd Weddinging, an oral surgeon who worked with Iris Wedeking launched iDENTICAL. Medtech startup uses technology to allow your dentist, with a little training, to replace one tooth with another customized dental implant. No drilling required. He raised $4.6 million to pilot the first human test of the technology. The results are promising.
Iris Wedeking, co-founder and CEO of iDENTICAL, personalized dental implants without drilling
When Wedeking was 23, she founded a non-profit organization, Kesem. Provides support to children whose parents have cancer. Over the next six years, he raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, scaled the organization and built the board. He left to earn an MBA and attended the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.
Wedeking spent the next eight years at Clorox, learning to leverage customer insights to develop brands. But he wanted to do something more fulfilling, something that had more meaning and purpose.
Wedeking and her husband have opened three dental implant centers in the Bay Area. “I was in charge of recruiting the doctors to staff these offices, and we only wanted to hire general dentists to make it more affordable for patients,” Wedeking said. Finding general dentists with the skills to perform the procedure proved difficult. “We closed two offices and went back to the plan.”
At the same time, Dr. Wedeking was involved in drill-free dental implant technologies. “This technology could change the game and allow any dentist to do implants,” said Wedeking.
Currently, patients go to an oral surgeon to have a tooth extracted and then wait three to four months for the extraction site to heal. The oral surgeon then drills a hole in the patient’s jawbone and screws the titanium implant into that hole. Wedeking will perfect the technology and launch a medtech startup. Dr. Wedeking continued to practice dental surgery.
iDENTICAL’s patented technology enables your dentist to make dental implants without a drill in three simple steps:
1. A general dentist extracts the bad tooth and sends it to IDENTICAL.
2. iDENTICAL creates a 3D tooth model and manufactures the custom implant.
3. The replacement tooth is sent back to the dentist, who places the implant where the original tooth root was. This procedure reduces the placement time of an implant to one week after extraction. With minimal training, any general dentist can perform the procedure.
But to perfect the technology and bring the device to market, Wedeking needed to raise capital. He didn’t have the friends and family with the money to risk funding a startup. Instead, he applied to accelerator and incubator programs that would make those imports. Wedeking entered into two programs that are complementary to each other.
Fogarty Innovation is an education incubator that provides training and mentorship to early stage and Series A medtech startups. On the day of his show, he would meet with investors. Through Fogarty, Wedeking met NuFund Venture Group, formerly Tech Coast Angels.
NuFund is a San Diego based early stage investor group. Dan Petersen, an oral surgeon, is one of its investors. He became a huge champion and took the investment over the finish line. Now it’s on the board. “Once the NuFund came on board, others started piling in,” Wedeking said.
Berkeley SkyDeck has a general technology focus and leverages its alums to help startups. “I learned a lot there and made connections with some great investors,” Wedeking said. One of iDENTICAL’s first VCs — Creative Ventures — came through SkyDeck.
“I think fundraising is basically sales,” Wedeking said. “It was a lot of pounding the pavement.” He met a lot of people. Many passed on the idea. But some referred her to others and some invested.
“It’s a compelling vision that you can communicate and articulate effectively in a way that inspires people to join your cause,” Wedeking said. “As a leader, my primary job is to inspire, empower and engage investors, board members, employees, mentors and advisors to share in my vision for the company. I believe iDENTICAL will transform the dental industry and make the implants safer, less invasive and a better experience.”
Last year, iDENTICAL launched a first-in-human pilot study of its drill-free technology at the School of Dentistry of the University of São Paulo in Brazil. Fogarty made the referral to the dentist and the results are encouraging. Based on nine months of data, the implants integrate with the surrounding bone and are healthy and stable, Wedeking commented. Feedback from both dentists and patients has been positive.
iDENTICAL has added Jim Mosch, retired President and COO of Dentsply Sirona (the world’s largest manufacturer of professional dental products and technologies), to its board of directors.
The simple procedure could greatly expand the number of dentists who could perform implant procedures, thereby reducing costs.
The next phase is to do a large clinical trial. Data from the study will allow iDENTICAL to apply for 510(k) FDA clearance. Clearance is a pre-market submission to the FDA to demonstrate that the device is safe, effective and substantially equivalent to another device on the market.
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