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

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 will research the feasibility of two other configurations a HIE hub supplementing existing EHRs and 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 PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE Community health centers CHCs are a critical component of the oral health care safety net providing care to the poorest and most vulnerable patients As the Affordable Care Act brings millions of new patients into the safety net CHCs need more and better tools to help manage this growing population The proposed Electronic Health Record EHR system to be created in this project is such a tool allowing CHCs to effectively characterize and manage the oral health of their constituent populations