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By Alicia Webb, MSHI, BTDH, RDH and Shannon Sommers, MSHI, BTDH, RDH (Article reprinted with permission from Dental Economics. Feb. 21, 2021.)
Growing evidence supports the need to integrate medical and dental patient care and data. However, very few organizations are positioned to address this issue as medical and dental practices continue to remain siloed in their health-care delivery.1 In order to seamlessly share patient information across medical and dental providers, we must examine health informatics and information technology, and how their use can improve collaboration and communication between health-care providers.1
Improving collaboration and communication
Informatics is a field focused on the acquisition, storage, and use of information.2 Health informatics encompasses the integration of health-care science, computer and information science, and cognitive science to support and manage health-care information.3 As a discipline, health informatics did not begin to fully develop in the United States until the mid-1970s.4
Enhancements in the quality of health-care delivery with improved health outcomes and advancements in patient education have significantly improved since then, and credit can partially be given to the evolution of informatics and information systems. The goals of informatics are to narrow the gap between data acquisition and data use in patient treatment, and to improve interoperability. With the introduction of electronic health records, communication between health-care providers has vastly improved.2
The knowledge and understanding of data processes is the driving force behind the power of data, providing a strong balance between health-care information and health-care delivery. The use of health informatics provides the necessary knowledge and tools to best use this influx of information, and the result is to achieve the highest quality of health-care delivery with improved health-care access and lower health-care cost.5
Application in dentistry
Dental informatics is a specialization within health informatics and is centered around the foundations, fundamentals, and principles of the health informatics domain. Dental informatics is a multidisciplinary field that combines dentistry and information technology to help dental professionals make informed choices to improve practice and management processes in dental care.6
Organized dentistry plays a prominent role in defining dental informatics, and the American Dental
Association ensures that the profession is engaged and involved in the evolution of informatics through its Center for Informatics and Standards and the Standards Committee on...