Using Teledentistry to Improve Access to Dental Care for the Underserved

Advances in dental care have documented that early diagnosis, preventive treatments, and early intervention can prevent or reduce the progress of most oral diseases, conditions that, when left untreated, can have painful, disfiguring, and lasting negative health consequences. Unfortunately, millions of American children and adults lack regular access to routine dental care, and many of them suffer needlessly with disease that inevitably results in significant decrements in their quality of life. Problems in access to oral health care cut across economic, geographic, and ethnographic lines. Racial and ethnic minorities, people who have disabilities, and those from low-income families, particularly children, are especially hard hit. In most rural areas in this country, especially, there are many barriers to dental health care, including geographic remoteness, sparse population, adverse seasonal weather and road conditions, poor or no public transportation, poverty and lack of health insurance, a less mobile aging population, culturally specific health care needs of many groups (especially American Indian and immigrant populations); a low number of dentists relative to total population, and a scarcity of specialty and subspecialty dentists. Teledentistry is an exciting new area of dentistry that uses electronic health records, telecommunications technology, digital imaging, and the Internet to link health care providers in rural or remote communities to enhance communication, the exchange of health information, and access to care for underserved patients. This article