Dentistry and Interoperability

Abstract

Information has become the vital commodity of exchange in recent decades. Medicine is no exception; the importance of patient information in the digital form has been recognized by organizations and health care facilities. Almost all patient information, including medical history, radiographs, and feedback, can be digitally recorded synchronously and asynchronously. Nevertheless, patient information that could be shared and reused to enhance care delivery is not readily available in a format that could be understood by the systems in recipient health care facilities. The systems used in medical and dental clinics today lack the ability to communicate with each other. The critical information is stagnant in isolated silos, unable to be shared, analyzed, and reused. In this article, we propose enabling interoperability in health care systems that could facilitate communication across systems for the benefit of patients and caregivers. We explain in this article the importance of interoperable data, the international interoperability standards available, and the range of benefits and opportunities that interoperability can create in dentistry for providers and patients alike.

Treatment deferral for elevated blood pressure at a dental school clinic

“…An additional barrier to effective hypertension management after detection at a dental visit is a lack of interoperability between electronic health records, especially those commonly used in the medical and dental fields 19 . Restricted information sharing between medicine and dentistry places an increased onus on the patient to accurately relay health information.…”

“…18 An additional barrier to effective hypertension management after detection at a dental visit is a lack of interoperability between electronic health records, especially those commonly used in the medical and dental fields. 19 Restricted information sharing between medicine and dentistry places an increased onus on the patient to accurately relay health information. This is particularly harmful to patients with lower health literacy who may be at higher risk of experiencing adverse health outcomes or suboptimal care due to systems-based failures.…”

Privacy-Aware Cloud Architecture for Collaborative Use of Patients’ Health Information

“…However, to realize the full potential of collected medical data, healthrelated information technology systems and products are required to seamlessly share information among each other, but unfortunately, the vast majority of medical devices, electronic health records, and other systems lack interoperability [39]. Patients' health records are often stored in a non-coded, non-structured, and non-standard form, hindering the exchange of information among health information systems [40]. Heterogeneity is currently a major challenge in the healthcare industry to achieve interoperability, especially among proprietary applications provided by different vendors [39].…”

Clinical Decision Support to Reduce Opioid Prescriptions for Dental Extractions using SMART on FHIR: Implementation Report

“…Unfortunately, dental EHR systems are generally not part of the medical EHRs; therefore, dentists rely on the patients to complete a medical history questionnaire. Currently, the information exchange between dentistry and medicine is hampered by a lack of data standards and interoperability between medical and dental EHR systems [6].…”

“…CDS can be designed to save providers time and help them provide safe, personalized analgesic prescribing by bringing together relevant medical conditions, current medications, a prior history of substance use, and additional prescribing information from the state prescription drug monitoring program. The problem with integrating siloed yet important health information [6] and the proposed solution of using CDS to integrate this information into one interface serves as the premise for this research study [10].…”