Dental Informatics in India: Time to Embrace the Change

Abstract

Dental informatics is comparatively a juvenile and new field that has noteworthy potential for supporting clinical care, research, education and management. This field utilizes computer science, information sciences and the application of same to espouse dentistry. However, in the under-developed and developing countries almost most of the dentists are unacquainted about dental informatics, its goals, what it is capable of achieving and by what means they can get involved into it. Despite of emerging advances, certain conflicts also go along with it such as, professional under representation, security issues of the stored information due to universal access to computers high speed internet connections. Endnote software was used as resource material to collect literature which was carefully arranged in a synchronized way. Hence, the purpose of this review was to give an overall scenario of dental informatics, its applications, challenges and recommendations for further enhancement in this area.

Can Orthodontic Informatics Combat the Pandemic Pitfalls?

“…3 Data analytics can thus help generate evidence-based support systems to answer basic questions about common clinical information and patient management problems. 4 In orthodontics, the golden opportunities with informatics thus include the following.…”

“…Some of the other technical challenges include ensuring interoperability in information systems; to secure user authentication and privacy issues; developing standards to ensure consensus among stakeholders; and to reduce the cost of digital services to ensure the maximum inflow of data. 4,5 Legal challenges include manipulation of digital files/ digital forgery, questionable efficiency, and legitimacy of digital signatures to validate dental records; the requirement and confidentiality of electronic consenting for patients, participants, researchers, and even clinicians for transfer or exchange of records.…”

The Great Awakening - Digitalization in Dental Healthcare during the pandemic COVID-19

“…An oral health database called as Big Mouth Dental Data Repository is developed from electronic health records. The students have enabled 1.5 million unidenti ied health records and the faculty to query and research (Chhabra et al, 2016).…”

Dental Informatics: A Click to the Future

“…For the first time, it was Aleksei Mikhailov of the Moscow State University who gave the term as the discipline that "studies the structure and general properties of scientific informa tion including laws of all the processes of scientific communication". 4 Dental informatics has developed significantly since the 1960s, when there was the first use of infor matics approaches to address dental issues (Ledley). Similar to informatics researchers in medicine, researchers in the nascent field of dental informatics were individuals who had been trained in dentistry and other disciplines, such as engineering, or dentists who had partnered with other professionals, such as computer scientists.…”