Beyond the Drill: Can Digital Gadgets Redefine the Future of Dental Education?

ABSTRACT

Background

The integration of artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality (VR) and haptic technologies is revolutionising dental education, offering transformative opportunities to enhance skill acquisition, ergonomic awareness and student well‐being. These tools offer immersive, repeatable and personalised learning experiences, addressing challenges such as underdeveloped manual dexterity in digitally literate students and post‐COVID disruptions in hands‐on training.

Aim

This letter aims to highlight the transformative potential of AI‐driven adaptive feedback paired with VR and haptic simulators in creating risk‐free environments for mastering complex procedures, while advocating for strategies to reduce clinical errors and promote sustainability by minimising reliance on physical resources.

Discussion

Despite their potential, barriers such as high costs, resistance to change, logistical complexities and insufficient longitudinal evidence hinder widespread adoption. These challenges perpetuate educational disparities, particularly in low‐resource regions, and necessitate targeted strategies such as cost‐effective models, faculty retraining and international collaboration. The rise of digitally native educators and global initiatives, such as the Digital, VR‐Haptic Thinkers network, signals a shift toward future‐ready curricula that prioritise equity, sustainability and innovation. As mandated by the EU's 2024 directive, digital dentistry knowledge is now a fundamental component of basic dental training.

Conclusion

To fully harness these technologies, stakeholders must address evidence gaps, validate cognitive benefits and align curricula with modern learner expectations. This letter calls for urgent collaboration among educators, institutions and industry to overcome barriers, ensuring dental education evolves to meet 21st‐century demands for equitable, high‐quality oral healthcare delivery.

The landscape of dental education in the 21st century has entered a period of transformative disruption. Advances in artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality (VR), haptics, and other digital technologies are not merely incremental extensions of traditional teaching methods [1, 2, 3]. Instead, they represent a paradigm shift that will fundamentally redefine how future dental professionals are trained to deliver high‐quality patient care [4, 5]. For instance, AI has demonstrated strong performance in dental licensing examinations and detecting oral diseases through image analysis [6, 7, 8, 9, 10], potentially enhancing the training of dental students [11, 12]. The crucial question emerges: Is the true power of digital dental education being unlocked, or are the hidden keys still being overlooked?

1. AI, VR and Haptics: From Adjuncts to Essentials

One of the most compelling opportunities lies in the integration of VR and haptic devices, which AI can further augment for personalised learning experiences [13, 14]. These tools have become indispensable pillars in healthcare education, supporting multiple dimensions of dental learning: enhancing knowledge acquisition, accelerating mastery of fine motor skills, promoting ergonomic awareness, reducing student anxiety and serving as a psychotherapeutic tool [15, 16, 17, 18, 19]. Their capacity for immersive, repetitive and individualised practice provides an experience akin to having a tireless and skilled clinical mentor available around the clock [20, 21]. However, simulator fidelity varies by task, transfer to real‐patient performance is uneven across studies, and a subset of learners may experience motion discomfort or sensory overload. Nevertheless, despite robust evidence over the past decade demonstrating the effectiveness of these approaches in dental training, global adoption remains slow [22]. Reluctance to embrace these technologies risks underutilizing a powerful instrument for shaping tomorrow's dental professionals [23].

2. Post‐COVID Education and the Dexterity Dilemma

The acceleration of digital education during the COVID‐19 pandemic highlighted both opportunities and vulnerabilities [24, 25], not only for patients but also for educators and students [26]. Online platforms sustained theoretical teaching, but the absence of hands‐on training exacerbated an emerging issue: the new generation of dental students, though highly digitally literate, often enters preclinical training with underdeveloped manual dexterity, leading to heightened stress during tasks requiring motor precision [19, 27, 28, 29].

For students who missed out on regular clinical practice in their novice years of training and repetitive practice in their training laboratories, there was a potential risk of compromising patient safety and treatment outcomes [30, 31, 32]. Therefore, curriculum innovation is urgently needed, with the integration of VR and haptic simulators, combined with AI for adaptive feedback, to offer realistic, ergonomic and risk‐free environments for learners to refine their motor skills without incurring clinical error consequences [33, 34, 35, 36]. Institutions should consider setting minimum in‐clinic requirements to ensure exposure to anatomic and clinical variability that simulators cannot yet replicate, thereby preventing over‐reliance on simulator scores alone.

3. Barriers to Widespread Integration

Several barriers inhibit full integration of VR and haptic systems into dental curricula [3, 37, 38]:

• Cost: Initial investments remain prohibitive, especially in low‐resource regions, perpetuating training inequities and limiting access for underserved institutions [22]. This financial hurdle not only delays adoption but also exacerbates global disparities in dental education quality, as seen in areas with limited funding for technology infrastructure.

• Resistance to change: Many educators remain attached to traditional teaching practices, hindering the adoption of novel methods due to familiarity with hands‐on, mentor‐based approaches [39]. Overcoming this requires cultural shifts within faculties, as digitally immigrant instructors may need targeted retraining to appreciate the benefits of immersive tools [40].

• Logistical complexity: Integration demands curriculum redesign, alignment with learning objectives and extensive faculty training, requiring institutional commitment, infrastructure and time [41]. These challenges can strain resources, particularly in programs already overburdened by post‐COVID adaptations, leading to inconsistent implementation across schools [42].

• Adaptation to the new generations: Current and upcoming student generations anticipate and prefer independent, interactive learning with instant feedback, which traditional curricula often fail to provide [43]. This mismatch can reduce engagement and motivation, as digitally native learners thrive in adaptive environments but may face frustration with outdated methods [44].

• Evidence gaps: While short‐term studies show promise, robust longitudinal research is needed to confirm improved clinical performance and patient care outcomes over time [45, 46]. Without this, scepticism persists among stakeholders regarding the long‐term efficacy of these technologies. Additional protocols and assessments of the efficacy and ethical aspects of emerging technologies are also constantly required [47, 48].

• Validation needs: Despite the educational benefits of tools like 3DVR, their integration into curricula remains underexplored, with key questions around replacing traditional clinical training, achieving comparable effects and enhancing cognitive skills [49]. For example, currently, there are no benchmarks for validating 3DVR‐haptic simulation training in dentistry using neurophysiological measures of cognitive effects, which are essential for assessing whether these methods effectively foster learning, high‐level thinking and decision‐making skills.

Targeted strategies—such as cost‐effective models, faculty development, institutional buy‐in and rigorous multi‐center research—are essential to overcoming these barriers, with international collaboration accelerating progress [50, 51, 52, 53].

4. AI, VR, Haptics: A Transformative, Lifelong Solution

Looking forward, VR haptic simulators, enhanced by AI, will be foundational technologies across the dental education continuum, offering sustainable solutions for all training levels [54, 55]:

• Undergraduate learners benefit from early acquisition of manual dexterity, supported by instant feedback and unlimited opportunities to practice [56].

• Advanced preclinical and clinical trainees can refine their skills in complex procedures within controlled, replicable scenarios, such as treatment designs of dental prostheses, dental implants and oral surgeries [57, 58, 59].

• Postgraduate professionals can use VR haptics for specialisation, ergonomic enhancement and continuing competency training.

• Practicing clinicians can rely on them for lifelong learning, stress reduction and adaptation to new procedures and technologies.

Beyond their pedagogical and ergonomic value, VR haptic simulators also provide long‐term economic and environmental benefits [60, 61]. By allowing students to repeat procedures endlessly in a virtual environment, these systems eliminate the need for large quantities of extracted natural teeth or artificial resin teeth, which are costly and limited in supply [22, 39]. The capacity to replicate the same gesture without consuming physical materials not only reduces expenses but also ensures fairer access to training resources.

Moreover, this digital approach aligns with principles of eco‐responsibility. Traditional preclinical training often generates significant waste through the use of single‐use plastic blocks, disposable teeth and consumable materials [62]. VR haptics minimise this footprint by substituting physical practice with virtual repetition, thereby reducing reliance on non‐biodegradable resources [63]. The variety of clinical scenarios that can be simulated within a single digital platform further enhances sustainability by maximising training outcomes while minimising environmental impact.

Barring economic constraints, AI, VR and haptic solutions could help reduce educational disparities and enable equitable, future‐ready dentistry, particularly in underserved regions, by providing safe and stress‐reducing learning environments and means to access oral healthcare.

5. A Call to Action

With the growing evidence of their benefits, digital gadgets should not be considered superficial for dental education [64, 65], even though further studies are needed to fully establish their convenience and acceptability by dental students and educators. They enhance skill development, student and educator well‐being, clinical accuracy, resilience and patient‐centered care, offering structured, repeatable learning that aligns with the needs of 21st‐century dentistry [12, 38, 66, 67]. Failure to embrace them risks widening educational disparities and leaving graduates unprepared for future oral healthcare demands [68, 69, 70, 71]. Educators, institutions, policymakers and industry must collaborate to transform challenges into opportunities, ensuring excellence in future care through urgent action to elevate dental education.

According to the Commission Delegated Directive (EU) 2024/782, an ‘adequate knowledge of digital dentistry and a good understanding of its use and safe application in practice’ should be included among knowledge and skills in basic dental training [72]. Dental edtech groups, such as the Association for Dental Education in Europe (ADEE) and Digital, VR‐Haptic Thinkers (VRHT), foster a global community that advances innovation in dental education, complementing traditional methods [73, 74]. AI, VR and haptic solutions reduce educational disparities and enable equitable, future‐ready dentistry, particularly in underserved regions, by providing safe and stress‐reducing learning environments and means to access oral healthcare [71, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80]. Faculty training programs are vital for equipping academic staff with the competencies necessary to transform teaching delivery and preclinical competency assessment, thereby ensuring a relevant, inclusive and future‐oriented education [81, 82, 83].

An encouraging trend is the emergence of a new generation of digitally native educators who are poised to accelerate the integration of AI, VR and haptic technologies into dental education [54, 84]. Unlike their digitally immigrant predecessors, who often require extensive retraining and mindset shifts to adopt new tools, these educators are inherently fluent in digital environments and more receptive to pedagogical innovation. Their familiarity with interactive platforms, adaptive learning systems and immersive technologies positions them as catalysts for change, enabling them to bridge the gap between traditional curricula and modern digital solutions [85, 86]. By introducing tech‐enhanced teaching methods and mentoring their peers, digitally native educators play a pivotal role in reshaping institutional culture and accelerating the adoption of future‐ready educational models.

Emerging digital technologies are essential for developing sustainable, future‐ready dental curricula that unite innovation, environmental responsibility and economic value. The ADEE Green Awards in 2024 (Budapest) and 2025 (Bucharest) recognised VRHT's leadership, demonstrating that excellence in dental education must be aligned with equity and sustainability.

The Thinkers: A Global Movement in Dental Education The Digital, VR‐Haptic Thinkers (https://vr‐hapticthinkers.com) represents a pioneering global network uniting professionals, educators and researchers to advance digital, virtual reality and haptic technologies in dental education and practice. With 63 specialised niches embedded in top‐tier dental institutions and representing more than 27 000 students worldwide, the network catalyses the reimagining of traditional training, reinforces manual skill acquisition and shapes a more equitable and future‐ready generation of oral healthcare professionals.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Felszeghy S., Kada A., Jackson A., et al., “Beyond the Drill: Can Digital Gadgets Redefine the Future of Dental Education?,” European Journal of Dental Education 30, no. 3 (2026): 750–756, 10.1111/eje.70079.

Data Availability Statement

The authors have nothing to report.