New Zealand has a national electronic oral health record project that will introduce a new generation of information systems to dental services in public hospitals. Naturally we will want to introduce SNOMED CT, but we are looking for advice on the best content and implementation resources available.
4 Comments
Mark Jurkovich
Hello Alastair,
There are a number of sources and people within the Dental SIG that could possibly help you from a number of different aspects. A greater understanding of how dental care is delivered in your public hospitals would be a big help in pointing you to good sources of information (as an example, I am from the USA and our public hospitals usually provide very limited dental services, most often dealing with accidents, severe pain and swelling, etc. Few hospitals provide basic preventive and restorative services, so their terminology and implementation needs are quite different from a general dental practice) . Basically, a more comprehensive view of the project scope, tools, and ability to design implementation into the software would be most helpful. I will work up a few questions and, if you are able to respond to them, I can narrow down your search and hopefully save you a lot of time. Would that be helpful to you?
On a slightly different topic, the Dentistry SIG will be holding an in person meeting at the annual IHTSDO meeting that is taking place in Wellington in October. We would be delighted to have you and/or others from New Zealand participate!
Regards,
Mark
Mark Jurkovich
You may also reach me at my email address of jurko003@umn.edu
Alastair Kenworthy
Thanks Mark, great reply. I realise now I misspoke a little in saying public hospitals, because - you'e right - that's mostly emergency work in NZ as elsewhere, when I should have included the free public dental service that is provided to children up to about 13 years. The dentists work out of caravans that move from school to school, seeing every child at least once a year. Between 13 and 18 years, children receive fully subsidised care from a private dentist. It would be useful to have an electronic oral health record that could be shared or transferred between providers, but that's not the case at present.
As one of the local contact people, I'm very pleased to hear you're holding a face-to-face meeting in Wellington (my home town) - a fantastic opportunity to get some Kiwis involved. I'll relay your invitation to the national EOHR programme team and to the NZ Dental Association.
Alastair Kenworthy
Mark, thanks again for your emails. It strongly appears that the general dentistry refset the Dentistry SIG is developing will be a good fit to requirements for New Zealand's national electronic oral health record solution for publicly funded dental services.