Digitalization in dental health care 

I have graduated as a dental hygienist in the end of the year 2021. I do not hold many memories since my childhood experiences from dental health care, but I do have noticed development in digitalization over the time. One time was few weeks ago when I had to get some paper files from archives at work. It got me like “wow, we have come so far since those days when it was all about shuffling papers”. I just cannot describe how much digital patient information system has changed the game so to speak. Game changer has been ability to collect the data from every one of the tooth surfaces of the patient. Nowadays we can collect the data from little things that matters a lot. I have also seen the development of the patient reports. Back in the days it was told in a few words like “check-up, dental health education” when today we do write detailed patient reports with good and clear sentences. It gives a lot more information for both – to the patient and to another professional – about the important health factors.  

Digitalisation in dental health care has already increased digital appointments. Earlier this year we switched one year old’s dental check-ups from in-person-appointments to online appointments, and it has worked well! We are also offering online appointments to the couples/individuals who are expecting their first child – conversational online appointment is a good place to discuss about expectant parents’ and baby’s oral health care. I think chats are quite popular these days and we can also see it’s benefits of use in dental health care. All of these things have already changed our work positions, and I would see it only in a positive way! Taking new digital steps has felt natural for me and it has diversified my work.

Using digital tools has improved in dental industry and to my opinion it is showing more efficient in private sector due to pursuing profit, better incentives and fewer bureaucratic hurdles. We can do more digital scanning and print dental crowns. It is going more from handicraft to material printing forms. It will speed up the work process and has impact on the costs as well. I think there will be more development in using artificial intelligent for example taking and reporting patient x-rays without need of a dentist in the future. I have experienced that time is money in dental industry. To my opinion digitalization and AI will be part of estimating treatments and their effectiveness. I predict, we will be having an automatic dental health kit that will be taking care of your oral health effortlessly! 

Otherwise, dental care as a work is most of made by hands and needs good individual skills. There will be needed real people and their knowledge to make that work in the future. People are not ready to be treated by robots, not yet in health care – right?

Here is a picture powered by AI: future dentistry  

Open digital society and GDPR  

Digitalization has improved in personal and society level over the decades. It has brought up the topic of people’s privacy. General Data Protection Regulation – the law of security is holding on that privacy in personal and professional systems. GDPR is also assigning companies’ responsibility to develop data protection by the law and that way it helps to build the trust between me, my colleagues, my patients and my employer. We can collect the information about people in many ways and levels, why it is important that the information is secured and out of hand of external. There is a lot of confidential information in my field of health care that needs to be kept private We must pay attention when handling this type of information and always remember to document the reason why accessed a specific patient’s records. Sometimes it would be helpful if I could contact the parents of a over 13 years old patient and share information about the dental visit, but the law prevents me from doing so.  

I have become aware about the threats and data breaches in societies. Cyber threats are getting into health care systems and watching the video about cybercrimes by James Lyne made it even more hard to predict which kind of criminals would be behind those breaches.  

Negative effects of the GDPR are that complying can be expensive and administratively burdensome for companies increasing workload and costs. GDPR is also bringing restrictions in health research because the use of personal data in research is more strictly regulated, which may slow down progress.  

ChatGPT – what do you think about taking care of oral health? 

I have started using AI more often earlier in this year. It has been easy way to find out things in a conversation kind of way.  

  1. My gums are bleeding while brushing. What should I do? 

I wanted to know what ChatGPT would answer to this quite common problem. I think it came up with good guiding like use soft brush and start flossing consistent which people should start if they are observing the symptoms of gingivitis. ChatGPT also guided to make an appointment to dentist if the situation is not improving by your own act. So, I was quite happy with this one.  

  1. Why periodontitis (advanced gum disease) needs to be treated? 

ChatGPT was good at explaining the causes of periodontitis and where it can lead to and how it can affect to your overall health including chronic diseases complications. The main thing treating periodontitis is in oral health habits and simple “what you are doing at home to improve your oral health care”. It would been important ChatGPT to bring this detail up because it is said in Current Care Guidelines.  

  1. I asked how to contact the dental clinic I am currently working.  

Yes, ChatGPT did give me the right information again, but it was collected from random information collection website and not from the official website of the wellbeing services county. The information on the website was quite packed and short and I could not find out when the pages are updated so it can hold misinformation.  

Overall, I do like the fact that ChatGPT brings the information in sections, and it makes easy to follow the answer. ChatGPT is usually asking would you like to know more about the topic or go deeper with the information, so it helps to get more interested in. I think the benefit using AI is having that conversation kind of search of information. It will give you the information in the form you were asking it, so you do not need to collect the information from different places. ChatGPT will give you the sources of the information is you want to know where it came from.  

In the other hand, ChatGPT can be very credible when asking a question and if you question something then usually the answer can be something like “you are correct, it is actually not a true” so definitely trusting only to AI can be misleading. I also have noticed it collects the answers from random sources of the topic that internet has available so it can be hard to separate scientifically proven information.  

A self-evaluation 

It was fascinating to dive into the orientation videos – it felt like time travelling and understanding the development of digitalization. The scientists have seen the future direction of potential development over years and years ago. It was also interesting to see us now in the future back then. Digitalization is playing a big role in ours daily basis and is widely a big part of our work. I have learned that it has changed and will continue changing our work positions. Digitalized tools will be developing in our use and will make us embrace new habits. Nowadays you cannot act in life without digitalization. Digitalization is often presented as a right and an opportunity for everyone to access and use digital services and improving digitalization is the main goal for lots of people, companies and societies. But how well are we actually keeping people updated and trained to use them effectively?  

GDPR is protecting our privacy but how can we be protected from cyber-attacks especially in health care? That is one clear though that has been increased in my mind and will be one thing I need to find out more.

Finally, I think this good old saying fits well here – “digitalization is a good servant but a bad master” and it is something we should keep in our minds when developing the digitalized society.  

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