Orthero completely changed the manufacturing method in the dental sector, which is one of the areas where personalized production is made the most.
The only way to correct crooked teeth is braces that do not come out for a long time. In Turkey, ₺6.5 billion is spent on dental treatment every year. Orthero, founded by four entrepreneurs Efe Turhan, Ferit Guler, Aydin Dikkulak and Seyyid Bucak from Istanbul Technical University (ITU), brought a technological solution to this painful and expensive treatment method.
The enterprise produces transparent appliances (dental apparatus) specially for the person in an artificial intelligence-based software three-dimensional printer. This treats problems such as perplexity in the teeth and tooth spacing without the need for metal braces. Since Orthero appliances can be easily inserted and removed, it is not noticed that the patient is an orthodontic treatment when viewed from the outside, and this treatment reduces the patient’s stay on the sofa by 40% compared to metal braces.
The dental sector is one of the areas where personalized production is the most. The software developed by Efe Turhan, one of the founding partners, completely changed the manufacturing methods in the sector. The first domestic company working in this field brought Orthero an investment of $2 and a half million from 19 investors in three rounds in total.
This year they will expand to five more countries
By the end of February 2021, the company provides services to 33 thousand patients with nearly 2500 physicians in total. It achieved 98% success in these cases. It currently exports to Poland, Ukraine, Czechia, Slovakia, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Kosovo, Azerbaijan, Philippines, Algeria. Orthero’s goal is to open up to 5 countries in the EMEA region by the end of the year.
Orthero, who first started working with five dentists in 2012, realized that the solution they developed worked and decided to continue the business. In 2014, Turkey launched its first digital orthodontics software. The partnership structure of the company changed in the last months of 2016. Efe Turhan, one of the founding partners of the company, said, “We are four founding partners. All four of us are engineers who are graduates of ITU. We specialized in software, production and finance. That’s why our business is primarily based on engineering. At the back of the job are advanced manufacturing technologies and advanced software. We design on the computer and manufacture on the computer. We work like a digital factory. We produce without human touch. That’s why we were able to look at the work we did as an engineer. We have turned our focus on the products used in dental treatment in the past and the slow and costly treatment process.” He summarizes the location of the company as, “Thanks to the software we made, we started a process in which the entire analysis is planned on the computer.”
Turhan especially emphasizes the following: “Orthodontic treatment with transparent appliances is a treatment method that has been used for 20 years. If a patient wants to have orthodontic treatment with transparent plaques without using metal braces, he should go to a dentist or orthodontist.”
The company’s working model and how it works is explained as, “First, the dental molds from the dentists they have contracted with are scanned and transferred to the digital environment. Then a three-dimensional model of the patient’s teeth is created. This simulation is submitted for the approval of physicians. After the approval of the physician, we manufacture transparent plaques that will straighten the teeth in a personalized way, in how many steps the patient’s teeth will be corrected. The patient uses each plate in 2 weeks and switches to the next plate.”
Source: Webrazzi / Translated by Irem Yildiz