
ZimVie is a new name circulating in the dental implant world - but they are far from newcomers to the industry.
As an official partner of ZimVie, Digital Smile Design company shares a joint commitment to improving the integration of smile design, dental implants and comprehensive dentistry, and helping dentists worldwide to deliver comprehensive clinical care to the highest quality. After their recent rebrand, we decided to take a look back over their history and just some of the significant developments that they have pioneered over the years.
Christian Coachman shares some key highlights here:

The history and legacy of ZimVie
The recent rebrand to ‘ZimVie’ is just the latest evolution of one of the dental implant industry’s most compelling companies. Their story began in 1927 when Zimmer® was founded to develop orthopedic equipment. In 1977 Biomet was founded as an orthopedic company and both companies went through significant developments over the following decades, such as Biomet entering the dental implant market in 1999 with the acquisition of Implant Innovations (3i) and Zimmer forging an official alliance with Zfx™ to add digital dentistry solutions in 2011. In 2015, a merger brought the two companies together to form Zimmer Biomet and, in 2022, ZimVie separated legally from Zimmer Biomet to become an independent, publicly traded company. That’s why today, the name ZimVie brings to mind not just the company of the present day but the legacy of all these brands from the past. And as the name has evolved so too have their solutions, which are more focused than ever on dentistry. In fact, over the years ZimVie has been instrumental in developing several significant milestones which have become gold standards in the industry – and where they innovated, others followed.
Did you know that these four developments in the field of dental implants originated with ZimVie?
1. Platform switching
Platform switching - a proven strategy to maintain bone levels - has become a common solution in implant dentistry and ZimVie were the first to discover, educate on and globally commercialize it.
2. Scannable healing abutment
Developed in 2005, the famous Encode concept is a 3 in 1 abutment: healing cap, impression post and scan body.
Designed with gradually rising emergence profiles for natural tissue healing
It has a pink matte appearance for esthetics and clear scans with reduced reflection
3. Hybrid implant surface
The hybrid implant surface for early and long-term peri-implant bone support was pioneered by ZimVie in 2003 and still today is known as a smart and biological solution which has become a must in modern implant dentistry.
4. Implant internal connection
A key development in the field that offers better seal integrity than conical and other flat-on-flat connections. As Christian mentions in the video, it is difficult to imagine implant dentistry today without these significant innovations.
DSD + ZimVie

As we move forwards with this partnership, we look forward to continuing to collaborate on education, customer support and research and development, exploring opportunities to better serve dentists and patients and strengthening each others' businesses through our core activities. The DSD Planning Center currently offers a varied range of dental implant procedure products and services as well as live treatment planning sessions for DSD Clinics as they prepare to carry out their surgeries. Get a closer look at some of these products here:
DSD Implant Partial Planning & Guide Design →
Full Arch Implant Bridge Manufacture With Implant Components →