The Operating System for Dental AI | Andrea Albertini, CEO of Global Distribution and Technology, Henry Schein

Working on the manufacturing side taught me how innovation is built, product are conceived, developed, built, but also supported through the entire life cycle.

Early in my career at Cefla and Castellini, I was responsible for operation first, supply chain, product development, innovation, and later general management.

And that experience gave me a deep appreciation for the complexity behind every piece of equipment that the dentists use today.

To put it in simple, very level terms, manufacturing taught me how value is created, while distribution taught me how value is delivered.

And having experienced both has given me a much more complete view of the dental industry.

But I want to say that what is unique about Ereshine is that we don't see just one part of the value chain.

Because if we operate across better equipment products, private label and branded consumables, implants, endodontics, product manufacturing, global distribution, software and practice management through the Erishang One.

So we operate really across manufacturing, distribution, and the digital infrastructure that connects practices.

And that give us a real system level view of dentistry, not just products or not just delivering of products.

So for me, the key side that innovation doesn't succeed of the design alone, it succeed when it's part of a workflow.

It's supported by the infrastructure and is aligned on how the practice.

You spent the better part of a decade in EMEA before moving to a global remit.

And EMEA is messy in the most useful way.

You've got regulatory diversity, structural complexity.

Every market is slightly different.

What does that environment teach you about how technology actually gets adopted inside dental practices as opposed to how technology companies believe it gets adopted?

You are certainly right that EMEA is highly fermented.

We can say complicated because of the regulatory framework, the different reimbursement system, different level of digital maturity between countries.

I would say that this complexity mirrors what big DSOs or big group practices experience internally.

If you think about the variability they can have across different location or the different level of staff adoption and digital maturity, or the fact that they have legacy system that they don't always align.

And this is one of the key gaps that we have observed, but especially because as RSI, we have a global footprint and we see how companies think about adoption versus how the single operators in the practice experience it.

Adoption depends on ease of use, integration into existing practice management, minimal disruption into the clinical workflow or consistency across location, and definitely rely on training to make the most out of these systems.

So I would say that through Erishan-1 and our broader infrastructure, we see this at scale because we support more than 100,000 locations globally.

And this gives us a real insight into what drives adoption and what slows it.

Andrea, that gap between how adoption really happens and how the industry imagines it happens, that really fascinates me.