Digitalisation in dental health care

I work in public healthcare as a dental hygienist. I’ve worked both, in private and public field of healthcare. Health care services are very relied on digital data. Most of the patient data is saved digitally.  In dental health care soon gypsum moulds are the only data that is saved in analogy way. This is also changing as the intraoral scanners are more and more common. If analogic model is wanted it must be printed with 3D printer from STL-data, but otherwise most of the treatment planning can be done digitally and actually much more accurately than in the analog way. For example dental crowns are planned digitally with the CAD/CAM programs very accurately and then milled from a ceramic block. And this all can be done in few hours as analog way would take the whole day.

This digitalisation all together isn’t as simple as it could be. For example when scanning teeth with intraoral scanner we are saving data to the device. And when we want to make the models, or produce a dental crown or surgical splint we must transport the data somehow to the manufacture device to start the production. If not using a usb-storagedevice, the data must be send by network. Here comes the situation with the data protection. If the lab is using the same protected network there shouldn’t be any safety issues, but if the data must be sent somewhere outside the network, we must be sure the data transfer is secured. And some dental labs are for example situated outside the Europe, when the regulations are even different.

Still the digitalisation has come here to stay, and I believe that the data security develops with it. And digitalisation of patient data for example is one major part of patient safety. If the data is up to date, treating the patient is easier, safer and more accurate and efficient, when we know exactly for example patients earlier examinations, treatment and medication. And not only the digital security is that matters. When health care providers have such an enormous amount of data where to have acces to, health carers have to think about what exactly is the data needed and allowed to see during each treatment or appointment.

Digitalisation in future will change the working field. For example, I’m sure there is not going to be as much actual patient appointments in future. More and more also the dental care will use remote appointments such topics as controls and assesment of treatment. And more and more this field is going to use individualised products. For example individually molded bone substitutes. These will shorten the procedure time but needs digital data beforehand, to prepare the material.

Open digital society and GDPR

General Data Protection Regulation is a law used in European union to rule how organisations are allowed to gather or use personal data. Personal data is quite a large concept. For example not only name, address, phonenumber and health information are personal data, but also online behaviour and purchase information are to mention. Actually all you can think that somehow could identify to a person.

In working life GDPR is to take seriously. Our data usage is regulated, and we must be very careful what, where, when and how we collect, use, store or share patients data. Sometimes it’s a bit scary how much data we have to store for example. And I still think that the educating in this matter is not up to date. The digitalisation has developed so quickly that for example health care professionals who has begun their career with paper patient cards, have a whole different perspective and education to data safety than professionals who have grown with computers and digital data.

In personal life it’s a bit scary how much I have allowed companies and oganisations to use my data. Every time I allow cookies or accept a personal information to be used to sign up to something, I’ve given a permission to gather some information about me. And this data is propably used to so many purposes I couldn’t even imagine. Also there are things that make life easier. As long as these organisations follow the regulations.

Chat GPT

I asked AI about mouth cancer patients encouraging to good teeth care or oral hygiene, because sometimes I find it difficult to provide. I think AI answered quite good. It even encouraged to be empathising and positive and listen to the worries about the situation. That’s the important part of the job even if I am mostly giving advices to good oral hygiene.

I also asked about mucositis, a painful condition that appears on patients with radiotherapy or chemotherapy. The answer didn’t really give me any complementary information. But was still quite accurate.

The most intresting question was about Low level laser therapy for TMD-patients. I already knew that the studies about LLLT are variying about wether it its effective or not at all. And the answer from AI was the same, but still it gave also a recommendation to use it as it is a non-invasive treatment.

AI seems to be very careful to give an advise to way or another. And this way it maybe should be. But I think there’s a risk, that if having a lack of critisism to the answers, some may interpret the advice to be  more accurate than other.

Self evaluation

I learned more about GDPR and how personal data is used and also how it is allowed to use. Even though the GDPR has been used in working field already it’s important to review it regularly. And really think how we manage it in everyday life.

This section of the course also gave me more to think about how others use digitalisation in their working field. And how different fields are depended on it or how the usage of digitalisation or data has changed.

It was also interesting to learn how Chat GPT works. Maybe I will use it later on.

The blogs I commented:

https://digitalworldadventure.wordpress.com/digi-society/

and

DIGI SOCIETY