Massive Multi-user 3D Dentistry

A friend of mine owns a company that has been developing a Dental office management app. He has successfully developed, and sold a point-of-sale app business to a major software company.

I’ve tried to describe in the following way how Croquet could, and eventually will, be used in the dentistry field where his application is deployed.

Every communication medium has a different strength. Novels describe character and situation. Radio focuses on dialog. Movies enhance action. 3D's strength is modeling "process". It shows "who" did, should do, or is doing "what", "where", "when", and "how" all at a glance. Examples of an application of this aspect of 3D can be seen in the 3D enactments used in the court of law.

Not knowing the current real needs of the field of dentistry; I've made some assumptions. I realize that current user interface style is finely tailored to the record keeping part of office management and that there are serious privacy & confidentiality concerns in the medical field that don't lend themselves to a massive multi-user presence environment.

However, I can imagine a few other possibilities.

1. Replace Webex for conferencing at all levels
   Use Croquet for remote expert medical consultation, remote patient consultation, office-to-office communication for large organization, and even remote equipment control. Instead of showing sheets of papers and slides of pictures one at a time, participants can walk through something like an open-air museum of documents, photos, video, and 3D models of places, replacement parts, medicine chemical structures and reactions, etc. all while talking to each other in conference. Lines and pointers can connect difference media and words or lines of text in different documents together to overtly show relationships and causality. Participants with the proper authority can leave comments and "annotations" that can be hidden or revealed to each individual based on each individual's personal criteria. One can even remotely control other 2D apps in different floating 2D "windows" while in session via VNC. (Though I hope it will never be needed (God willing), this also promotes a rich, instant communication medium where participants do not wish to be physically present together, as in the case of a possible avian flu epidemic.)
   
   
2. Training new staff on processes and procedures
   3D promotes the visual demonstration of why the procedures are important and their consequences. Even though each office may have policies and procedures different from each other, Croquet is flexible so it can model each one per their needs.
   
   
3. Replace 2D workflow applications with actual working 3D models or simulations of what the workflows try to describe
   This allows rapid dynamic updating of the process to reflect actual practice by those individuals involved, rather than training all the staff to an unfamiliar "flowchart" metaphor with "and/or/loop" logic control. The flowchart metaphor allows exceptions to be missed if they are many pages away in a complex process. A simulation can reveal what to do next based the current situation, and the consequences, while still allowing one to roll back in to an try other possible outcomes.
   
   
4. Educating the patient
   3D demonstrations of medial procedures to ease patient's anxiety. These demonstrations can use actual photos and models of the patient's own physical attributes. This information can help the patient make more intelligent and informed decisions that can serious affect their health, evaluate the level of risk, and the evaluate corresponding personal fiscal consequences.
   
   
5. Zooming out to look at the big picture
   Examine and analyze equipment distribution and consumable supply distribution, waste disposal, demographics, epidemiology, patient migration patterns, marketing, and state of the art practices to foster more communication, awareness of problems, and cooperation between dental offices. This still maintains the capability to zoom-in to examine, share, and communication about specific details. This might also have homeland security implications.
   
   
6. Whatever needs that the dentistry field might use or might already be using Google Earth for 3D information
   
   
7. Modeling the transition from one complex business procedure to another complex business procedure
   Complex business procedures can greatly differ from each other -- of the likes that hospitals face from time to time. Better modeling and education (at a visual level that individuals who do the work can understand) can lead to a faster, smother, less traumatic, and less expensive transition.
   
   
8. Any and all of the above applications working together
   in a continuous, deeply interconnected way including connections to the databases of the 2D applications.