Electronic Oral Health Records in Practice and Research

Abstract

Electronic Oral Health Records (EOHRs) contains all personal health information belonging to an individual and is entered and accessed electronically by healthcare providers over the person’s lifetime. This chapter presents a systematic review about EOHRs, describes the current status of availability of EOHR systems, benefits and barriers for implementation and EOHR usage in clinical, public health and research settings to pave the way for their rapid deployment. The chapter draws the scenario of how a fully integrated EOHR system would work and discuss the requirements for computer resources, connectivity issues, data security, legal framework within which a fully integrated EOHR may be accessed for real time data retrieval in service of good patient care practices. This chapter also describes the need for defining required criteria to establish research and routine clinical EOHR and how their differences may impact utilization and research opportunities to establish practice-based research networks.