This paper is the last in a series of 16 which have explored current uses of information communications technology (ICT) in all areas of dentistry in general, and in dental education in particular. In this paper the authors explore current developments, referring back to the previous 15 papers, and speculate on how ICT should increasingly contribute to dental education in the future. After describing a vision of dental education in the next 50 years, the paper considers how ICT can help to fulfil the vision. It then takes a brief look at three aspects of the use of ICT in the world in general and speculates how dentistry can learn from other areas of human endeavour. Barriers to the use of ICT in dental education are then discussed. The final section of the paper outlines new developments in haptics, immersive environments, the semantic web, the IVIDENT project, nanotechnology and ergonometrics. The paper concludes that ICT will offer great opportunities to dental education but questions whether or not human limitations will allow it to be used to maximum effect.

Participants were enthusiastic about online learning and learned effectively with this teaching strategy, but desired much more interactivity than existed in the current design.

There appears to have been little previous research interest in continuing professional development (CPD) of dentists and the oral health team. This paper presents data and information on the following aspects of CPD in 17 countries in Asia, Australasia, Europe and North America: availability of different types of CPD, its providers, data on uptake of CPD courses and activities, and funding of CPD. The results indicate that lectures and hands-on skills courses were held in all 17 countries but the use of the Internet to deliver CPD was by no means universal. CPD was funded from a variety of sources including universities, governments and commercial companies. However, the only universal source of funding for CPD was dentists themselves. Data on participation were available from only three countries. Research issues based on these results will be listed in a second paper.

The framework presented in this article demonstrates strategies for a global approach to e-curricula in dental education by considering a collection of outcome assessment tools. By combining the outcomes for overall assessment, a global model for a pilot project that applies e-assessment tools to virtual learning environments (VLE), including haptics, is presented. Assessment strategies from two projects, HapTEL (Haptics in Technology Enhanced Learning) and UDENTE (Universal Dental E-learning), act as case-user studies that have helped develop the proposed global framework. They incorporate additional assessment tools and include evaluations from questionnaires and stakeholders' focus groups. These measure each of the factors affecting the classical teaching/learning theory framework as deined by Entwistle in a standardized manner. A mathematical combinatorial approach is proposed to join these results together as a global assessment. With the use of haptic-based simulation learning, exercises for tooth preparation assessing enamel and dentine were compared to plastic teeth in manikins. Equivalence for student performance for haptic versus traditional preparation methods was established, thus establishing the validity of the haptic solution for performing these exercises.