Electronic Health Records in Dental Education: A Scoping Review and Quantitative Analysis of Publications

Abstract

The use of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) by dentists is already a reality in several countries, including Brazil, both in private practices and in higher education institutions, also providing data for oral health surveillance and epidemiology. The purpose of this scoping review was to search the literature for publications on the importance, applicability, efficacy and ease of the use of electronic medical records in dental education. Following the terms of the PRISMA-ScR, this review sought publications on the use of EHRs in dentistry schools. The databases used in the search were Pubmed, BVS, Web of Science, Scopus and ProQuest, without language limitations and publication period, using the terms ‘Dental School’, ‘Dental Education’ and ‘Electronic Health Records’. Initially, the search resulted in 548 articles. After reading the abstract, full text and removing duplicates, 63 were included. Then, it was divided in three groups according to main thematic: EHRs implementation (n = 25); Data obtained from Dental Schools EHRs used for publications (n = 26); EHRs system efficacy and challenges (n = 12). The use of electronic medical records in the teaching of dentistry collaborates positively with the development of students during graduation. We believe that this alternative of searching and collecting information will be increasingly used in epidemiological studies, due to its practicality and objectivity.