Digital dentistry in the computer age

BACKGROUND AND OVERVIEW

Computers are becoming an integral part of the practice of dentistry. Smaller, smarter and more ergonomic computing devices will support an increasing proportion of dental practice activities. Technology will make practice management more efficient, mainly by reducing transactional overhead. Educational software and intelligent assistants will increasingly support the needs for decision making in clinical practice. Research will benefit from automated tools for data acquisition, management and analysis.

CONCLUSIONS

Dentistry must actively shape the application of technology. It can do this by developing a cadre of experts in dental informatics, relying on sound research principles, effectively disseminating best practices and developing strategic objectives for the implementation of technology.

CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS

Computer technology is an essential ingredient for state-of-the-art patient care. Dentists must stay current with this rapidly developing field to make appropriate choices in their use of technology.

Physician executives in the 21st century: new realities, roles, and responsibilities

This article is based in part on responses from 150 physician executives who participated in an interactive discussion of future trends at the American College of Physician Executives' 1999 Spring Institute and Senior Executive Focus, in Las Vegas, Nevada, on May 13, 1999. The session included electronic polling on 40 predictions, such as the future composition of the clinical workforce and how technology will affect the way that medicine is practiced and the patient-physician relationship. The prediction for physician executives? A growing number of physician executives will find themselves at the top of their careers in the next decade. The physician executive of the future will have a broad array of management opportunities and career choices. More doctors will be managers. Physician executives will work at every level of health care organizations, across the continuum of care, from large complex urban systems to small rural settings.

Not your father's health care

We in health care are living and working in a world that, for all its technical changes, differs little in its basic assumptions, structures, payment systems, beliefs, expectations, and job titles from the world of health care a generation back. How much change can we expect over the coming years? A lot more than we are prepared for. Look at the array of new technologies headed our way, from genomic sciences to customized vaccinations. Many of the breakthroughs promise incredible abilities to prevent disease, to profile our proclivities, and to manage our genetic predispositions over long periods of time, rather than merely wait until the disease manifests in an acute phase, then treat the symptoms. Digital technologies bring physicians executives enormous opportunities for new ways of gathering, storing, and mining information, for new types of communication between medical professionals, for new communications with customers, and new ways of steering large, complex enterprises. Unprecedented opportunities for change keep piling in through the door. Vast pressures for change keep building from every side. And the rewards for anyone who can lead the change keep compounding.

From legacy systems via client/server to web browser technology in hospital informatics in Finland

The majority of hospital information system installations in Finland are based on a legacy technology from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). This paper presents an architecture and a tool set which provide a migration path from terminal-based to client/server technology, conserving much of the investments in existing applications. It is argued, though, that a new technological revolution is required in the form of extending the web browser/server technology to operational information systems in hospitals. A blueprint is presented for a further migration path from client/server to browser/server technology. The browser technology is regarded as a major challenge to hospital information systems in the next few years.