Digital workflow in dental public health, preventive dentistry, and dental education

Abstract

This chapter presents a step-by-step guide and research evidence on digital workflows involved in dental public health. Dental public health provides community-based expertise in the surveillance and measurement of oral health status and its determinants. Clinical visual detection of caries has, so far, been considered the gold standard for detection of enamel caries while intraoral radiographs aid mainly in the detection of dentine caries. There are several advantages of digital workflow in dentistry that may offer benefits to patients in different aspects of dental treatment using CAD-CAM technology. In the past decade, the advent of digital methods has had an influence on dental education. It has been suggested that digital methods could be useful even for assessing dental student activities. Patient-specific preventive and treatment guidelines and referrals to care may then be initiated accordingly.