What is Dental Informatics?

Dental informatics is a fast emerging area of dental science, with an increasing number of applications and tools that could help dental clinical practice. The advent of computers and information technology first laid the foundations for dental informatics in the 1960's. Since then, informatics have been used in several fields of medical science.

Dental informatics involves the use of computers and information technology to:

• Improve dental practice
• Improve research in dental sciences
• Improve management in dental healthcare
• Improve educational programs in dental sciences
• Develop core literature that can be made available worldwide
• Train specialists in a manner that is more uniform across the world
• Help dentists and other specialists make informed choices

There are four primary areas in dental informatics:

• Computer science
• Information science
• Cognitive science
• Telecommunications

Other aspects to informatics include psychology, anthropology, social sciences, engineering, mathematics and languages. Informatics aims to provide solutions to problems arising in dental practice, education, training and research. It involves the collection, classification, storage, retrieval, analysis and dissemination of information relevant to dentistry.

Further Reading

• All Dentistry Content
• Dental Crown / Tooth Cap
• Radicular Cysts
• Tartar Causes
• Importance of Pharmacology in Dentistry

Written by

Dr. Ananya Mandal

Dr. Ananya Mandal is a doctor by profession, lecturer by vocation and a medical writer by passion. She specialized in Clinical Pharmacology after her bachelor's (MBBS). For her, health communication is not just writing complicated reviews for professionals but making medical knowledge understandable and available to the general public as well.