Development of an Electronic Health Record with Comprehensive Dental Diagnostics and Information Exchange Functionality and Optimized for Public Dental Health Environments

Oral Health Solutions, Inc., Oakland CA

Investigators

Abstract

? DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The overall goal of this STTR project is to reduce oral health disparities in both outcomes and care by enhancing the effectiveness of Community Health Clinics (CHCs) dental providers. To accomplish this goal, the project will create an Electronic Health Record (EHR) system that allows them to effectively characterize and manage the oral health of their constituent populations and share health information with other EHRs. The EHR will incorporate the Dental Diagnostic System (DDS), a well-established standardized terminology for oral diagnoses that greatly improves the capture, storage, sharing, retrieval, and aggregation of oral health data by different professionals across specialties and sites of care. It will also incorporate a robust Health Information Exchange (HIE) functionality that will allow CHC providers to share information among their various EHR and practice management systems and with community-based outreach programs. This Phase I of the STTR research project will determine the feasibility of developing a commercial product that incorporates the DDS terminology and health information exchange functionality into a scalable EHR based on the existing Dental Data Manager (DDM), an EHR-like system developed by Oral Health Solutions targeting public oral health providers. Scalability will allow the product to meet the specific needs of the various technology environments found in CHCs today. The primary configuration will be a standalone EHR that includes the DDS and HIE functionality. Phase 1 will research the feasibility of two other configurations: 1) a HIE hub supplementing existing EHRs and 2) a diagnostic terminology support system for existing EHRs. In order to accomplish this goal, OHS will determine: ? The current Electronic Health Record (EHR) technology in the CHC safety net today ? The Health Information Exchange standards and protocols used by the current CHC EHRs ? Specific EHR User Interface optimizations that will facilitate the use of dental diagnostic terminology ? The cost and time perspective of developing the proposed commercial product With established feasibility, the information determined in this Phase I of the STTR will be used to create the specification for a commercial software product, the Dental Data Manager EHR, to be built in Phase 2.