Informatização das clínicas médico-dentárias da cidade de Viseu

Abstract

Introduction: Over the last decades, Dental Informatics has improved the dental practice, not only by increasing the use of computers and other hardware, but also through the creation of certain programs to support clinical management and to help the improvement of the clinical procedures. Objective: Analyze and evaluate the level of computerization of dental clinics in Viseu and assess opinions, attitudes and considerations on the use of computer systems and information technology. Material and methods: Paper questionnaires were distributed in person, to all clinical directors of dental clinics in Viseu (n=78). The questionnaire had 36 questions, which addressed the characteristics of dental practice, the use of Internet, software and infrastructures technology, in addition to the introduction, storage and access to clinical information. The collected data was statistically analysed using IBM® SPSS® Statistics v20.0. Results: The response rate was 78,8% (n=60). All clinics have computers (67,2% has chairside computers). Clinical information is mostly electronically recorded, although 4 clinics (6,6%) use only paper record. Usually dentists introduce these clinical data (77,2%) and they believe that the clinical use of computers contributes to patient education and improves dental appointment’s efficiency. Nevertheless, dentists identified barriers to the use of computers in dental clinics due to the safety of clinical data, problems in crossed infection control and crashes into the computer system. Conclusion: Actually, clinical computing is disseminated in dental clinical practice. However, patient’s clinical information electronic registry still presents a great potential for development and evolution in dental informatics and, generally, in Dental Medicine.

Date of Award	11 Jul 2013
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	André Correia (Supervisor)