Electronic dental record information model

摘要

Electronic dental records (EDRs) vary widely with regard to the content and structure of the information they contain. At a time when electronic patient records are becoming increasingly essential in delivering high-quality patient care, the 'Tower of Babel' that today's EDRs represent is an increasingly significant drawback. This situation prevents the computational approaches for supporting patient and will also significantly hamper the exchange of patient information within the emerging National Health Information Infrastructure. Incomplete and fragmented EDRs force many practitioners to maintain both paper- and computer-based patient records, potentially contributing to the very limited adoption of completely electronic patient records by general dentists. This paper proposes an electronic dental record information model (EDRIM) design as a reference standard for the content and structure of EDRs.