Teleconsultation and telediagnosis for oral health assessment: An australian perspective

Abstract

Oral health informatics is the application of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for problem solving complex and dynamic information and system interactions in dental science and oral health, research and education. In the last few years, there has been rapid development and expansion of the uses of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and it is presently used in many areas of oral health care practice. ICT offers new opportunities to improve oral health care by enhancing early diagnosis, facilitating timely treatment of oral diseases, and reducing isolation of practitioners through communication with peers and consultation with specialists. Above all, ICT offers improved access to care as an effective alternative to classic face-to-face oral health professional-patient interaction, in terms of both clinical results and cost-effectiveness. Still, compared to medicine, teledentistry is rarely used in everyday oral health practice.This chapter reviews developments in teledentistry, outlines the benefits of applications in teledentistry and provides information on the rationale for the use of teledentistry. A second part provides an overview of teledentistry and its uses in different scenarios based on experiences in various research projects in the areas of teleconsultation and telediagnosis in Australia. These are projects that represent responses to the serious dental workforce shortage in underserved Australian communities and are equally applicable to many countries facing the same issue.