Improving outpatient clinical practice towards a computerised dental information system

Abstract

A complete dental patient records is required in a redesigned dental health system that specifies that patient care to be safe, effective, patient-centered, timely, efficient and equitable. In order to achieve these goals, increased use of information technology is necessary as the profession is moving to electronic patient records. One important requirement is that patient information must be easily stored and accessible to all treating members of the dental care team. With the advent of Electronic Patient Record (EPR) a person can make decision easier and precise, based on the organization data repository. EPR or “computer-based medical record” is defined by the Patient Record Institute as “a repository for patient information with one health-care enterprise that is supported by digital computer input and integrated with other information sources”. There are six main modules included in this research area which are the patient registration module, charting module, appointment module, billing module, and treatment plan module. This paper will highlights the needs of EPR for dental clinical practice at the Ayer Keroh Polyclinic, Melaka, focusing on the dental charting module. Open source database management system such as MySQL is used in the development of prototype charting system module.