Today, oral health is recognized to play an integral role in overall well-being and quality of life. Despite all the efforts to achieve society with optimal oral hygiene, the rural areas of our country has many barriers to access dental services because of geographic remoteness, poor or no public transportation, less information about dental hygiene and lack of avaibility of specialized health care professionals leading to failure in implementing effective oral health care. In recent years, due to push of digitalization by government and use of computer and latest telecommunication technology have dramatically uplifted the entire health care system including dentistry to altogether a new level. In modern era, new opportunities are being provided for easy access to primary care professionals for proficient consultation by teledentistry. Use of teledentistry can contribute to bridge the gap between demand and supply of dental care facilities. Following paper presents overview regarding enormous scope of telecommunication in providing dental education and primary health care delivery.

1. NEXT STEP INTO DIGITALIZATION.
AN ATTEMPT TO GROW WITH COLLECTIVE EFFORTS IN ‘DIGITAL INDIA’

2.  Introduction
 Objectives
 What isTeledentistry
 Applications ofTeledentistry
 Benefits ofTeledentistry
 Components
 Teledentistry at global level and in India
 Magnitude of Problems
 Future Perspective
 Conclusion
2

3.  According to WHO STATISTICS,
 DENTIST:POPULATION RATIO In
 2004 - 1:30000
 In urban areas- 1:10000
 In rural areas- 1: 150000
 2014 - 1:10000
 Ideal ratio - 1:7500
4
Teledentistry: proposal of an implementation model in india by Mallick R, Perwez E, Noor R,Sachdeva S,TamrakarAK,Annals of Dental SpecialtyVol. 4; Issue 2. Apr – Jun 2016

4.  As we all are aware about the increasing use of information
technology and communication.
 There is also increasing demand of video conferencing and
digitalization which definitely saves time and money.
 Birth of teledentistry as a subspecialist field of medicine can be
linked to 1994 and a millitary project of U.S.A.(U.S. Army’s Total
dental access project)
3

5.  Cook(1997): “The practice of using video-conferencing technologies to diagnose
and to provide advice about the treatment over a distance.”
 University of Nebrasca: “Teledentistry is the use of information technology for
dental consultation, education, public awareness and care.”
 Teledentistry, a subset of the concept of telemedicine, involves the use of
Telecommunications and information technologies to support long-distance
clinical oral healthcare, patient and professional health-related education, public
health, and health administration.
5

6.  By reviewing the available literature
 Evaluate the concordance between distance
assessments(teledentistry) and face to face dental examination.
 Identify barriers to the implementation of this approach.
 Provide suggestions towards wider implementation of this
approach.

7.  ISROTelemedicine programme started in
2001
 Presently, theTelemedicine network of
ISRO covers 384 hospitals with 60 specialty
hospitals connected to 306
remote/rural/district/medical college
hospitals and 18 MobileTelemedicine units.
Extension of healthcare through telemedicine mobile
van during Koshi river floods in Bihar.http://www.isro.gov.in/applications/tele-medicine

8. TYPES OF
TELEDENTISTRY
TWOWAY
INTERACTIVE/
REALTIME
STORE AND
FORWARD

9. 7
Applications
Tele-
consultation
Tele-
diagnosis
Tele-
treatment
Tele-
education
Tele-training

12.  Ability to improve access to oral health care for the underserved
areas
 Reduce health care costs
 Improve the delivery of oral health care
 Overcome Shortages of Dental Professional (Arizona Department
of Health Services situated in USA)

13.  Collaboration of Health Providers
 Communication/collaboration with specialists
 Save travel time to a remote clinics

16.  For the success of the teledentistry initiative, it is important to partner with an ISP,
who could support this initiative by providing free or low-cost bandwidth, possibly
as a part of its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program.
 Internet Service Providers.
One such ISP (Reliance JioInfocomm)
4G high speed data coverage
1. 5,000 towns/ cities as well as over
2. 215,000 villages in India within 2015,with a target to expand
coverage to over 600000 villages .
 Press Trust of India, November 04, 2014. Reliance JioInfocomm Applies for Network Test Ahead of 4G Launch. Press Trust of India: New Delhi. Available at
http://gadgets.ndtv.com/telecom/news/reliance-jio-infocomm-applies-for-network-test-ahead-of-4g-launch-616167
 23. Press Trust of India, Apr 6, 2014. Promoting healthcare comes under CSR ambit: Government. Press Trust of India: New Delhi. Available at http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2014-
04-06/news/48908562_1_csr-norms-csr-activities-csr-work.

17. Privacy
Malpractice
LicensureAcceptance
Cost

19.  The teledentistry approach proved to be a feasible and viable solution, in terms of
time, stress, and money saved for patients.
 When taking a societal perspective, the implementation of TD is likely to be a cost-
effective alternative compared with the standard practice of face-to-face
consultation.
 Moreover, it is helpful for students to get better patient exposure thereby
improving there clinical expertise and ultimately the number of beneficieries.
10

20.  Teledentistry: proposal of an implementation model in india by Mallick R, Perwez E, Noor
R,Sachdeva S,TamrakarAK, Annals of Dental SpecialtyVol. 4; Issue 2. Apr – Jun 2016
 http://www.isro.gov.in/applications/tele-medicine
 PressTrust of India, November 04, 2014. Reliance JioInfocommApplies for NetworkTest Ahead
of 4G Launch. PressTrust of India: New Delhi.Available at
http://gadgets.ndtv.com/telecom/news/reliance-jio-infocomm-applies-for-network-test-ahead-
of-4g-launch-616167
 23. PressTrust of India,Apr 6, 2014. Promoting healthcare comes under CSR ambit: Government.
PressTrust of India: New Delhi.Available at http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2014-
04-06/news/48908562_1_csr-norms-csr-activities-csr-work.

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