At 3DISC, Marie-Laure Pochon believes AI, digital workflows, and patient understanding can transform the future of dentistry.
What does it take to leave an industry you have spent decades leading?
For Marie-Laure Pochon, it started with a realization: Dentistry remains one of the most undertreated areas in healthcare worldwide.
After more than 30 years in pharmaceutical leadership, including serving as President for Schwarz Pharma France and Executive Vice President Global Commercial at Lundbeck, Pochon made the unexpected move into dentistry in 2014 when she became CEO of Acteon Group, a worldwide leader in imaging and dental equipment.
Today, she leads 3DISC Dental Connect, a company combining imaging, intraoral scanning, AI, and digital workflows to transform not only dentistry itself, but also the relationship between dentists and patients.
But for Pochon, this transition was never simply about entering a new market or launching another technology platform. It was driven by a broader healthcare vision.
One statistic immediately stood out to her: While more than 90% of adults in Western countries are regularly monitored for general health conditions, only around 50% to 60% consistently receive dental follow-up.
To her, that gap reflects both a major public health issue and a tremendous opportunity for transformation.
Oral health remains deeply connected to overall health, including cardiovascular disease and diabetes, yet dentistry still occupies a very different place in the patient mindset compared with other medical disciplines.
“That mission, contributing to better care for a much larger population, is what attracted me deeply to dentistry,” says Pochon.
Very quickly, she became convinced that digital transformation, especially AI and visualization technologies, could fundamentally reshape the future of dental care.
From Corporate Leadership to Entrepreneurship
Coming from global pharmaceutical organizations, Pochon could easily have continued her career inside another large healthcare company.
Instead, she chose entrepreneurship.
Part of that decision came naturally. Pochon comes from an entrepreneurial family and describes business ownership as something that always felt familiar.
But family history alone did not explain the transition.
“What truly convinced me,” she says, “is that small companies today have unique advantages that large companies often no longer have.”
In her view, highly focused teams can move faster, adapt more quickly, and create value with a level of agility that large organizations increasingly struggle to maintain.
With digital transformation accelerating innovation cycles across every industry, Pochon became convinced that smaller structures were often better positioned to stay close to customers, close to market evolution, and close to change itself.
“With digital transformation, a small, highly talented, experienced, and focused team can sometimes move much faster and create more value than very large organizations.”
That philosophy eventually led her to 3DISC.
Seeing Potential Where Others Saw Limits
When Pochon first evaluated 3DISC in 2020, the company was still primarily focused on research and development.
What immediately caught her attention was the strength of the company’s technical foundation. The engineering capabilities, imaging expertise, patents, and hardware quality were already highly developed.
“The engineering, the patents, the imaging expertise, all of that was real,” she says.
At the same time, she recognized that the company was still early in its evolution. The software ecosystem was not yet where she believed the market would eventually need it to be.
Where others may have seen limitations, Pochon saw long-term strategic potential.
“I saw a company with deep technical DNA that could become much more than a scanner company.”
That vision became the foundation for transforming 3DISC into a company focused not only on scanning technology, but also on AI, patient communication, and workflow transformation.
For Pochon, intraoral scanning itself is not the final objective. It is the entry point into a broader digital ecosystem designed to improve communication, support clinical understanding, and transform the patient experience.
Leadership in a World of Constant Reinvention
Pochon believes leadership itself has fundamentally changed over the past two decades.
Earlier in her career, markets were more stable, technologies evolved more slowly, and business environments were significantly more predictable.
Today, leadership has become an exercise in permanent adaptation.
“Technology is moving so fast that we must constantly live with uncertainty,” she says. “We need to adapt quickly and we need to change faster than others.”
For many executives, that level of uncertainty can feel exhausting. Pochon experiences it differently.
“To be very honest, I find it extremely exciting,” she says. “Of course, it is demanding. Some days, you feel under pressure, even vulnerable. But this constant reinvention and permanent movement are also incredibly stimulating.”
At the same time, she believes strong leadership requires permanent self-questioning.
“The moment you stop questioning yourself, your decisions, and your assumptions, you are in danger.”
Technology Must Support Dentists, Not Disrupt Them
As digital dentistry evolves, Pochon believes one mistake still appears too often across the industry: Companies focus heavily on technical sophistication while underestimating usability, onboarding, and workflow integration.
In her view, innovation only succeeds if it reflects the real day-to-day practice of dentistry.
“Dentistry is deeply human and relationship-driven,” she says. “Technology must support every gesture of the dentist, not disrupt it.”
Even highly sophisticated technologies can fail if they are too complicated or poorly integrated into clinical workflows.
That philosophy has become central to how 3DISC approaches product development.
Rather than designing technology purely for technical performance, the company focuses on simplifying communication, improving adoption, and strengthening clinical relationships.
The Rise of the “AI Patient-Understanding Platform.”
That philosophy reached a new dimension with AVA, 3DISC’s latest AI-driven platform.
AVA combines imaging, AI, and visualization technologies to create what Pochon describes as a “AI Patient-Understanding Platform.”
In less than a minute, AVA generates a highly visual understanding of the patient’s clinical condition and structures treatment priorities into what should be treated now versus later.
The result is not simply better visualization.
It fundamentally changes the nature of the conversation between dentists and patients.
“In many cases today, patients do not really understand their condition or their treatment plan,” explains Pochon. “That lack of understanding directly impacts trust.”
According to her, the issue is not clinical competence. The issue is communication.
Patients trust their dentist significantly less than they trust other physicians. While trust toward general practitioners or cardiologists approaches 90%, trust toward dentists remains closer to 60%.
For Pochon, this is one of the most important structural issues in dentistry today.
AVA aims to change that dynamic by transforming the consultation into what she describes as an “adult-to-adult conversation,” grounded in transparency and phased treatment planning.
Instead of feeling pressured into immediate treatment, patients can better understand clinical priorities and engage in a long-term care journey.
The impact goes far beyond communication.
3DISC is already observing significant increases in treatment acceptance rates among early users.
“Your best margin is already in your patient’s mouth,” says Pochon.
In her view, most practices do not necessarily need more chairs, more patients, or more hires. They need better understanding and better acceptance from the patients already sitting in front of them.
“No hires. No new chairs. Just the highest-margin revenue you were already owed.”
For DSOs especially, she believes this could become transformational.
AVA does not simply improve workflows. It has the potential to increase revenue per chair, improve patient retention, standardize communication, and strengthen trust across large organizations.
BETTER UNDERSTANDING. GREATER TRUST. BETTER CARE.
Why Onboarding Matters More Than Technology
Pochon believes one of the biggest barriers to digital adoption in dentistry is not the product itself, but onboarding.
“For me, the most important barrier is onboarding,” she says.
Over the years, she has observed that successful implementation often depends less on technical specifications and more on how clinicians are supported during the first stages of adoption.
That observation led 3DISC to place significant emphasis on structured support during the first weeks of adoption.
“Adoption is not only about training,” she says. “It is about confidence.”
Clinicians need confidence not only in using the technology itself, but also in their ability to integrate it naturally into workflows and patient communication.
That confidence, she believes, is one of the key drivers of successful digital transformation.
Building Trust Through Understanding
At the center of Pochon’s long-term vision for dentistry remains one essential idea: trust.
She believes AI and visualization technologies can profoundly improve the relationship between dentists and patients by helping patients better understand their condition, treatment options, and long-term care needs.
“Digital technologies will help patients better understand their condition and treatment plans and ultimately trust their dentist more.”
Improved understanding leads to stronger trust. Stronger trust leads to better treatment acceptance. Better acceptance leads to improved long-term care.
Pochon believes this transformation could dramatically expand access to dental care worldwide.
“If 3DISC can contribute to improving trust, understanding, and access to care worldwide,” she says, “then that would truly be my dream mission in life.”
