About

The concept of Dental Product Shopper began when the staff at Integrated Media Solutions began asking dentists and hygienists how they decide to incorporate new products into their practices. When 10,000 of you were asked what influences the purchase of a new product, 2 of your top 4 answers were peer recommendations and product reviews.

Based on this input, we developed a concept to have your peers evaluate and review products within their practices. This process supplies readers with short-term information about new products that they might want to bring into their practices. Unlike other newsletters that review products for the profession, we are not being paid by manufacturers to evaluate their products, nor do we pay the dental professionals who perform the evaluations.

This is how the evaluation process works:

   * Each product is sent to 8 to 10 evaluators based on their declared areas of interest.
   * The evaluators use the product for at least 4 weeks, focusing on short-term criteria specific to that product.
   * At the end of the 4 weeks, each evaluator completes an evaluation form designed by the editorial staff in conjunction with the manufacturer and the editorial advisory board. The manufacturer is limited in its involvement in this process to ensure that the questions are relevant to the product being evaluated but do not influence the outcome of the evaluation.

The final score for each product is determined by dentists’ or hygienists’ evaluation of each specific criteria they are given, as well as their overall satisfaction with the product. After the score is determined, each product is given a distinction based on its final score.