Practice Patterns of Dentist Anesthesiologists in North America.

This study provides trends in the discipline of dental anesthesiology. A questionnaire-based survey was sent to 338 members of the American Society of Dentist Anesthesiologists to evaluate practice patterns. One focus of the study was modality of sedation/anesthesia used for dentistry in North America.

An ontology-based method for secondary use of electronic dental record data.

A key question for healthcare is how to operationalize the vision of the Learning Healthcare System, in which electronic health record data become a continuous information source for quality assurance and research. This project presents an initial, ontology-based, method for secondary use of electronic dental record (EDR) data. We defined a set of dental clinical research questions; constructed the Oral Health and Disease Ontology (OHD); analyzed data from a commercial EDR database; and created a knowledge base, with the OHD used to represent clinical data about 4,500 patients from a single dental practice.

Using electronic dental record data for research: a data-mapping study.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that, during the clinical care process, many dental practices record some data that are also collected in dental practice based research network (PBRN) studies. Since the use of existing, electronically stored data for research has multiple benefits, we investigated the overlap between research data fields used in dental PBRN studies and clinical data fields typically found in general dental records. We mapped 734 unique data elements from the Dental Information Model (DIM) to 2,487 Common Data Elements (CDE) curated by the NIDCR's PBRNs in the Cancer Data Standards Registry and Repository (caDSR).

Reusing electronic patient data for dental clinical research: a review of current status.

Objectives: The reuse of electronic patient data collected during clinical care has received increased attention as a way to increase our evidence base. The purpose of this paper was to review studies reusing electronic patient data for dental research.

Data Sources: 1527 citations obtained by searching MEDLINE and Embase databases, hand-searching seven dental and informatics journals, and snowball sampling.

Electronic dental record use and clinical information management patterns among practitioner-investigators in The Dental Practice-Based Research Network.

Background: The growing availability of electronic data offers practitioners increased opportunities for reusing clinical data for research and quality improvement. However, relatively little is known about what clinical data practitioners keep on their computers regarding patients.

Methods: The authors conducted a web-based survey of 991 U.

Conceptualizing and Advancing Research Networking Systems.

Science in general, and biomedical research in particular, is becoming more collaborative. As a result, collaboration with the right individuals, teams, and institutions is increasingly crucial for scientific progress. We propose Research Networking Systems (RNS) as a new type of system designed to help scientists identify and choose collaborators, and suggest a corresponding research agenda.

From information technology to informatics: the information revolution in dental education.

The capabilities of information technology (IT) have advanced precipitously in the last fifty years. Many of these advances have enabled new and beneficial applications of IT in dental education. However, conceptually, IT use in dental schools is only in its infancy.

English and Spanish oral cancer information on the internet: a pilot surface quality and content evaluation of oral cancer web sites.

Objective: Oral and pharyngeal cancers are responsible for over 7600 deaths each year in the United States. Given the significance of the disease and the fact that many individuals increasingly rely on health information on the Internet, it is important that patients and others can access clear and accurate oral cancer information on the Web. The objective of this study was threefold: (a) develop an initial method to evaluate surface and content quality of selected English- and Spanish-language oral cancer Web sites; (b) conduct a pilot evaluation; and (c) discuss implications of our findings for dental public health.

Advancing oral medicine through informatics and information technology: a proposed framework and strategy.

The implementation of information technology in healthcare is a significant focus for many nations around the world. However, information technology support for clinical care, research and education in oral medicine is currently poorly developed. This situation hampers our ability to transform oral medicine into a 'learning healthcare discipline' in which the divide between clinical practice and research is diminished and, ultimately, eliminated.

Barriers to implementing evidence-based clinical guidelines: a survey of early adopters.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to identify barriers that early-adopting dentists perceive as common and challenging when implementing recommendations from evidence-based (EB) clinical guidelines.

Method: This is a cross-sectional study. Dentists who attended the 2008 Evidence-based Dentistry Champion Conference were eligible for inclusion.

Towards automating the initial screening phase of a systematic review.

Systematic review authors synthesize research to guide clinicians in their practice of evidence-based medicine. Teammates independently identify provisionally eligible studies by reading the same set of hundreds and sometimes thousands of citations during an initial screening phase. We investigated whether supervised machine learning methods can potentially reduce their workload.

Preparing faculty members for significant curricular revisions in a school of dental medicine.

Resistance to change is expected, especially when change involves and impacts many stakeholders. During the past year, the Curriculum Committee at the University of Pittsburgh School of Dental Medicine has been preparing the dental school for a major curricular revision of its predoctoral program. This article describes how a faculty retreat was designed to gain support for and involvement in this reform process.

How information systems should support the information needs of general dentists in clinical settings: suggestions from a qualitative study.

Background: A major challenge in designing useful clinical information systems in dentistry is to incorporate clinical evidence based on dentists' information needs and then integrate the system seamlessly into the complex clinical workflow. However, little is known about the actual information needs of dentists during treatment sessions. The purpose of this study is to identify general dentists' information needs and the information sources they use to meet those needs in clinical settings so as to inform the design of dental information systems.

The dental informatics online community.

Dental Informatics (DI) is the application of computer and information science to improve dental practice, research, education, and program administration. To support the growth of this emerging discipline, we created the Dental Informatics Online Community (DIOC). The DIOC provides a dedicated professional home for DI researchers and serves as an open, common, and worldwide forum for all individuals interested in the field.

Comparative study of heuristic evaluation and usability testing methods.

Usability methods, such as heuristic evaluation, cognitive walk-throughs and user testing, are increasingly used to evaluate and improve the design of clinical software applications. There is still some uncertainty, however, as to how those methods can be used to support the development process and evaluation in the most meaningful manner. In this study, we compared the results of a heuristic evaluation with those of formal user tests in order to determine which usability problems were detected by both methods.

A preliminary model of work during initial examination and treatment planning appointments.

Objective This study's objective was to formally describe the work process for charting and treatment planning in general dental practice to inform the design of a new clinical computing environment.Methods Using a process called contextual inquiry, researchers observed 23 comprehensive examination and treatment planning sessions during 14 visits to 12 general US dental offices. For each visit, field notes were analysed and reformulated as formalised models.

A usability evaluation of four commercial dental computer-based patient record systems.

Background: The usability of dental computer-based patient record (CPR) systems has not been studied, despite early evidence that poor usability is a problem for dental CPR system users at multiple levels.

Methods: The authors conducted formal usability tests of four dental CPR systems by using a purposive sample of four groups of five novice users. The authors measured task outcomes (correctly completed, incorrectly completed and incomplete) in each CPR system while the participants performed nine clinical documentation tasks, as well as the number of usability problems identified in each CPR system and their potential relationship to task outcomes.

Determining the information needs of general dentists during patient care.

To improve patient care in general dentistry it is important to understand the information needs of general dentists and the barriers that prevent timely access to information at the point of care. We interviewed a convenience sample of 14 general dentists during routine patient care encounters. All dentists experienced information needs (M = 55% of cases).

Facebook for scientists: requirements and services for optimizing how scientific collaborations are established.

Background: As biomedical research projects become increasingly interdisciplinary and complex, collaboration with appropriate individuals, teams, and institutions becomes ever more crucial to project success. While social networks are extremely important in determining how scientific collaborations are formed, social networking technologies have not yet been studied as a tool to help form scientific collaborations. Many currently emerging expertise locating systems include social networking technologies, but it is unclear whether they make the process of finding collaborators more efficient and effective.

Quality assessment of English and Spanish oral cancer websites.

Based on the morbidity and mortality due to oral cancer, it is essential that oral cancer information available on the Internet be usable, organized and credible. We evaluated the information quality of 24 English-language and 25 Spanish-language oral cancer websites. English-language sites scored 74.

Supporting emerging disciplines with e-communities: needs and benefits.

Background: Science has developed from a solitary pursuit into a team-based collaborative activity and, more recently, into a multidisciplinary research enterprise. The increasingly collaborative character of science, mandated by complex research questions and problems that require many competencies, requires that researchers lower the barriers to the creation of collaborative networks of experts, such as communities of practice (CoPs).

Objectives: The aim was to assess the information needs of prospective members of a CoP in an emerging field, dental informatics, and to evaluate their expectations of an e-community in order to design a suitable electronic infrastructure.

Supporting the emergence of dental informatics with an online community.

Dental Informatics (DI) is the application of computer and information science to improve dental practice, research, education, and program administration. As an emerging field, dental informatics faces many challenges and barriers to establishing itself as a full-fledged discipline; these include the small number of geographically dispersed DI researchers as well as the lack of DI professional societies and DI-specific journals. E-communities have the potential to overcome these obstacles by bringing researchers together at a resources hub and giving them the ability to share information, discuss topics, and find collaborators.

Speech recognition in dental software systems: features and functionality.

Speech recognition allows clinicians a hands-free option for interacting with computers, which is important for dentists who have difficulty using a keyboard and a mouse when working with patients. While roughly 13% of all general dentists with computers at chairside use speech recognition for data entry, 16% have tried and discontinued using this technology. In this study, researches explored the speech recognition features and functionality of four dental software applications.

The feasibility of a three-dimensional charting interface for general dentistry.

Background: Most current paper- and computer-based formats for patient documentation use a two-dimensional dental chart, a design that originated almost 150 years ago in the United States. No studies have investigated the inclusion of a three-dimensional (3-D) charting interface in a general dental record.

Methods: A multidisciplinary research team with expertise in human-computer interaction, dental informatics and computer science conducted a 14-week project to develop and evaluate a proof of concept for a 3-D dental record.