Millions of people worldwide are edentulous, meaning they are missing all of their teeth. This leads to significant health and nutrition problems. Dentures could vastly improve the lives of edentulous people, but the cost of dentures and access to a dentist is far out of reach for many.
This is a big problem.
It is estimated that in the industrial world alone, more than 240 million people lack one or more teeth. In Europe and the U.S., an estimated 10% of the population is edentulous, and 35% to 40% are missing some teeth.
And while 25% of all adults over 60-years-old have lost all of their teeth, only 22% of them are covered by private dental insurance. As a result, even in developed nations, dental care is unreachable for many older people living on a fixed income.
Current approaches can require as many as 8 office visits to produce, adding a significant time burden to both the dentists and patients. Further, technological and methodological innovations in dentures have focused on expanding relatively affluent markets where people will generally pay what they must in order to get the care they need. This has resulted in a ready market for innovations as well as attractive investment prospects for new technologies, but also relatively high price points for dentures.
We believe it’s time for a major upgrade-- to apply new ideas and technologies to this problem, to address a historically overlooked and underserved market and get hundreds of millions of people chewing again!
Our ultimate goal is to manufacture and distribute 1 billion dentures for people who need them.
Digital technology offers the possibility of transcending current limitations and revolutionizing the process of making dentures as it has transformed industries for decades. We believe now is the time for dentures!
We envision the denture production process of the future to include three key steps: Scan, Analyze, and Fabricate.
We are looking for competitors to identify existing or promising technologies that can accomplish our goal. Competitors may submit solutions for any individual step in our envisioned process, or propose a solution that encompasses all three steps.
We foresee Step 2: Analyze, as being the most challenging step above, as it requires taking the digital output from Step 1 and preparing a digital 3D model to serve as the input for production in Step 3. As a result, we are focusing the efforts of this challenge on collecting in-depth solutions for Steps 1 and 3 and allowing Step 2 submissions to be high level, requiring future development. If you have contributions to make regarding the required software form or function in Step 2, we welcome you to submit these in the Submission Form, and we may pursue follow on opportunities to develop them.
Acceptable Phases of Technology
We understand that this challenge may result in identifying existing, off-the-shelf technologies. It may also inspire many futuristic, hypothetical technologies that are yet to be created. Competitors could also submit a hybrid proposal, combining novel and existing technology. Regardless, technologies should have at least been proven viable by analytical and/or laboratory studies. A prototype of the technology is not necessary but a proof-of-concept model is encouraged (a technical readiness level of 3). The technology does not need to be your own, you may submit an already existing technology that you think could be used for this purpose.
Submit your solution today!
We are a group of entrepreneurs from the dental and other related industries who have seen this problem and want to address it. We see this project as an opportunity to take what we’ve learned from lifelong careers in business and apply it to making the world work better for our friends who have no teeth.
Our intention is to identify methods, knowledge and/or technologies that can be commercialized. We will then launch a company to sell the solution in developed markets as a for-profit entity, and give it away in underdeveloped markets as a non-profit entity.
One-for-One Dentures
We plan to launch our denture product in the US and other developed markets with the express mission to use sales revenues to subsidize the giveaway of dentures to people who cannot afford them across low-income populations.
Don't have an idea or technology, but want to get involved as a Partner? Are you an NGO with presence in a developing country, interested in deploying new dental technologies? Contact us!
Guidelines updated February 14, 2018
The Billion Dentures Project aims to manufacture and distribute 1 billion dentures to people who need them.
The Challenge is seeking proposals for the most innovative and viable technologies that can be applied to Scan, Analyze, Fabricate, or all three steps as a whole shown below.
We foresee Step 2: Analyze, as being the most challenging step above, as it requires taking the digital output from Step 1 and preparing a virtual model to serve as the input for production in Step 3. As a result, we are focusing the efforts of this challenge on collecting in-depth solutions for Steps 1 and 3 and allowing Step 2 submissions to be high level, requiring future development. If you have contributions to make regarding the required software form or function in Step 2, we welcome you to submit these in the Submission Form [link], and we may pursue follow on opportunities to develop them.
We will award up to $15,000 in overall cash prizes:
To be eligible for an award, your proposal must, at a minimum answer these questions:
Whole System Eligibility Requirements
Acceptable Phases of Technology
We understand that this challenge could result in identifying existing, off-the-shelf technologies. It could also inspire many futuristic, hypothetical technologies that are yet to be created. Competitors may also want to submit a hybrid proposal, combining novel technology or software solutions for Step 1 and 2 with existing hardware technology for Step 3.
We leave it up to you. However, to help competitors better understand the phase of technology we are willing to award a prize to, we refer to NASA’s scale.
NASA uses a TRL, or Technical Readiness Level to assess the maturity level of technologies used in projects as they progress. There are 9 TRL levels, with 1 being the lowest, and 9 being the highest.
For the sake of this competition, we are interested in only technologies of a TRL 3 or higher. A TRL 3 has transcended beyond the speculative phase of TRL 2, and comes before TRL 4 where a prototype is ready. We are looking for technologies that have been proven viable by analytical and/or laboratory studies. A prototype of the technology is not necessary but a proof-of-concept model is encouraged.
Competitors who meet the above minimum requirements will then be ranked on the following metrics:
|
Metric |
Description |
Points |
|
Time |
How long does it take for the step proposed to be completed? |
20 |
|
Size |
How big is your solution? |
20 |
|
Ease of Use: Patient |
What is the customer experience like? Is it invasive? Uncomfortable? |
20 |
|
Ease of Use: Operator |
How user-friendly is the technology for the operator? Can someone be trained quickly to operate the equipment? |
20 |
|
Readiness |
How ready is the proposed technology? Refer to the Technical Readiness Levels to give an estimate according to the 1-9 scale for each step. |
20 |
|
TOTAL |
|
100 |
Following the competition, we may collaborate with the innovator to further develop their technology for commercialization. If appropriate, we will attempt to arrange licenses with the holders of existing IP to manufacture and/or distribute the proposed technology. We may also pursue additional challenges to generate working prototypes.
The highest scoring teams who meet the minimum eligibility requirements will be awarded a prize based on a formal judging process using the judging criteria stated in the Challenge Guidelines.
The Billion Denture Project Challenge encourages participation from all individuals, private teams, public teams, and collegiate teams. Teams may originate from any country or from multiple countries. Submissions must be made in English. All challenge-related communication will be in English.
No specific qualification or expertise in the dentistry field is required. Challenge organizers encourage individuals and non-expert teams to compete and propose new solutions. To be eligible to compete, you must comply with all the terms of the challenge as defined in the Challenge-Specific Agreement, which will be made available upon registration.
Submissions must be made online (only), via upload to the HeroX.com website, before the stated deadlines. All uploads must be in PDF format. No late submissions will be accepted.
Based on the winning criteria, prizes will be awarded per the Judging Criteria section above. In the case of a tie, the winner(s) will be selected based on the highest votes from the Judges.
In the case of no winner, The Sponsor reserves the right to withhold the Prize Purse amount. In place of the original prize amount, The Sponsor must issue a Consolation Prize to the teams or individuals closest to the winning solution in the amount of at least 10% of the total original prize purse.
All Intellectual property rights, if any, in the idea, concept, or activities demonstrated by the Submission will remain with the Innovator.
