Learning About Dental Informatics

Dental informatics, as a subfield in medical or health informatics, is the study of information technology for improving all aspects of dental practice, including management, clinical care, education, and research. It is important to understand that dental informatics is not simply the application of information and communication technology to the field of dental medicine, but much concentration is given to a research component. Drawing on many fields, such as telecommunications, dentistry, computer science, and information science, research and innovations strive to improve the field of dental medicine. As you can see, dental informatics is an interdisciplinary field.

Dental informatics is a relatively new field, but can be very beneficial to practicing dental professionals as well as their patients. Some improvements that have fairly recently come about due to dental informatics research include diagnostic digital imaging, dental information systems, electronic dental records, teledentistry, and online decision support. Dental informatics is expected to continue to develop helpful tools for the field of dentistry in the future as awareness spreads and research unveils further innovations.

Places to Find Out More Information

Check out the following links to discover more about the field of dental informatics. You will find upcoming conferences, journal articles, and other dental informatics resources.

http://www.dentalinformatics.com/. Here is a great and extensive resource for dental informatics, referred to as the virtual, global community for anyone interested in dental informatics. The online community is funded by the National Library of Medicine and membership offers access to resources in the dental informatics and dental technology fields as well as connections with like minded professionals to share ideas, problems, and research opportunities.

http://www.ada.org/prof/resources/standards/informatics.asp. Here you can find the American Dental Association or ADA Standards Committee on Dental Informatics. A listing of ADA specifications and technical reports in regards to dental informatics is available, as well as background information, brochures, and a product catalog.

http://www.amia.org/mbrcenter/wg/di/. The American Medical Informatics Association serves as a way to communicate and share expertise with professionals and specialists in medical informatics fields, including dental informatics. Learn about tools for improving patient care, including computer technology, dental information systems, and communications.

http://www.medinfo2007.org/. Visit this web site to find information on MedInfo2007, the 12th World Congress on Health Informatics, hosted by Health Informatics Society of Australia. The conference is to be held in Brisbane , Australia during August of this year and will focus on health informatics, including dental informatics. Find out everything you will need to know about the conference, including registration, paper submission information and tips about visiting Australia .

http://www.bmis.org/ebmit/2006_52_winter.pdf. The newsletter of the UK Health Informatics Society includes information on upcoming conferences, as well as a variety of information on informatics news, including current issues and news in the field of dental informatics.

http://adr.iadrjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/17/1/20. “A Preliminary Analysis of the Dental Informatics Literature” is a great article for understanding the strengths and limitations of the literature relating to dental informatics. Dental informatics literature is growing, and many articles concentrate on image processing and computer-aided diagnosis, therapy, and instruction.

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=116280. Follow this link for an article titled “Trends in students' knowledge, opinions, and experience regarding dental informatics and computer applications.” With dental informatics being a developing field and an increasing number of dental informatics programs being offered by universities, an examination of student trends is a worthy exploration.

http://jada.ada.org/  “Dental informatics: A cornerstone of dental practice” explores the potential contributions of the new field of dental informatics to the practice of dentistry. Numerous applications of dental informatics can provide significant support to dentistry.

The importance of dental health can not be denied and with dental informatics, it only becomes clearer as to why.