Development of a smart oral examination system for tablet personal computers / 대한구강보건학회지

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVES: In the present study, we aimed to develop an oral examination smart chart application for tablet personal computers (PC). We evaluated the time required to perform an oral examination and assessed the degree of user's convenience by using this application. We determined to make our application cost and human resource effective by automatically computerizing the statistics to facilitate its application in oral health services such as national oral health research. The development of this application for tablet PCs was aimed at recording the results of oral examinations. METHODS: We produced flow charts and designed the program screen, which would replace the existing paper chart. To evaluate the efficiency of the application, 1 preventive dentistry professor and 6 dentistry students performed an oral examination on 41 subjects. We performed the oral examination in duplicate using a tablet PC and a paper chart. The data collected were analyzed using the SPSS 18.0 program. P-values less than 0.05 were considered statistically significant. RESULTS: The time required for oral examination by the study group (the group using the application) and the control group (the group using paper) were 131.93+/-10.14 and 151.85+/-7.77, respectively; the difference between these values was statistically significant (P-value=0.002). The oral examination could be performed faster in the study group (the group using the application) than in the control group; therefore, we noted that the time taken for oral examination was reduced by using the application. CONCLUSIONS: The tablet-based system has been shown to save time by omitting the step of entering the paper chart data into a computer. Further, the findings of this study can be used to establish an oral health index database with the help of additional resources. Moreover, it would facilitate creating awareness among the patients with regard to their oral health indices through the use of visual aids.