We were just honored with the recognition from the Pride Institute for Best of Class for 2011!! When Dr Lou Shuman- president of the Pride Institute called to let me know I was so surprised! We got to be on the cover of Dental Product Reports and there will be a large booth at the ADA Technology Expo that we get to be a part of. This will allow offices to have a hands on section at the ADA- Wow! What an honor and I’m sooo excited!
There were several products honored with this award, each in their own technology class. He mentioned that these companies all were ahead of the game and have an impact on industry and leaders in the industry. Here I’ve listed a few…Gendex GSX-700, F-Secure, Acteon Soprolife, Sesame Communications, Cadent iTero, LED Dental Velscope Vx, Air Techniques Spectra, Sirona Cerec with Blue Cam, Lares Lightwalker, Dentsply professional NUPRO, Carestream Dental Kodak, Curve imaging software, Kerr SonicFill, Somnomed Matrx, Orascoptic Freedom. Congrats to all in their own class! As Dr Lou Shuman says, “The process is strictly unbiased and non-profit provided by the leadership in technology. The dental community can rely on these selections with complete confidence.”
I’m honored to be among this group!!
So I get this a lot since the Dental R.A.T. is an odd name. When I first was inventing the foot mouse and thinking of a name we thought of a lot (Rugrat, dental mouse, perio mouse, perio pedal) but basically the foot pedal was a foot mouse with numbers. So what do you call a large foot mouse? Ok a large mouse? A rat! And it just felt right to call it a Dental rat! Then we thought the acronym of Dental R.A.T. was fun, so it stands for Remote Access Terminal. Believe me, we have gotten a lot of flak over the name, several people have told us it was a horrible name. I even had a cute logo with a cute rat dentist running a computer with his feet, but marketing agencies told me to get rid of the rodent. Nobodies afraid of the computer mouse and we don't think of it as dirty and yucky, so why is a foot mouse called a Dental R.A.T. a bad thing? I don't know, anyway, the more we tossed it around we did change the logo but kept the name because we have learned that its easy to remember and people can see it just once and it sticks. Once we explain that it’s a big foot operated mouse and that’s why we call it a Dental R.A.T., they get that we have a sense of humor and they like it. And whats funny is several offices have named their Dental R.A.T.s- Viola (for violet color) or Blackie, they don't have to call it a RAT in the office if they don't want to.