The OnLine Journal of Dentistry and Oral Medicine 1(2): 1999


Editorial



A New Era in Dentistry



Renato M.E. Sabbatini, PhD

Associate Director, Center for Biomedical Informatics. Chairman and Associate Professor, Medical Informatics, School of Medicine, State University of Campinas, Brazil



A recent survey, made by the National Library of Medicine, in Washington, USA, revealed a concerning fact: the volume of information published in health sciences is doubling at every four years and a half! Until the end of the century, it is expected that this time will be reduced to three years. This is insane. It means that no health professional may even wish to be updated in his own sub-specialty. It also means that when the dental student finishes the course, which has had the same duration of four or five years in the past decades, a large part of the knowledge taught there will be obsolete. The conclusion is that if we do not drastically change the way we access information, how we generate, distribute and use it, we will fatally drown under this irresistible seaquake of information.

Here enters Informatics to our help. New technologies, such as the optical digital storage (CD-ROM, interactive videodiscs), multimedia, computer networks, virtual reality, intelligent databases, Artificial Intelligence, neural networks, portable computers, etc., are allowing dentists to increase up to 200 times their productivity in regard to access to information. A good example is how Internet, the international network of data communication is revolutionizing the health sciences. Presently (September 1999), there are more than 60 million computers, with more than 150 million users, connected to the network, in more than 150 countries. Electronic mail, remote access to computers and programs, the transmission of images, texts and software files between any of these computers, are making a revolution in sciences in general. Dentistry, slowly as usual, is also being affected.

Such computer networks will allow new forms of disseminating information, such as totally computerized libraries (the complete texts, plus images, available on the network or CD-ROMs), electronic magazines (you only copy the papers you want to read), congresses at distance, discussion of clinical cases among dentists geographically apart, intelligent systems which help the professional locate and summarize only the information which interests him, and far more. The progress is very fast, and the dentists are in state of shock. All of them admit that without Informatics, Dentistry will hardly be possible. It is time to update and learn, to continue learning. Informatics will be your trip companion throughout this fascinating landscape.


 

Renato M.E. Sabbatini holds a doctorate in biomedical sciences by the University of São Paulo, Brazil. He was founder and director of the Center for Biomedical Informatics of the State University of Campinas, Brazil, and is currently an associate professor of medicine and chair of Medical Informatics at the Medical School in the same university. A pioneer in distance education in Latin America, Dr. Sabbatini also developed programs in telemedicine and electronic publishing in the health sciences.

Email: renato@sabbatini.com

Home page: http://renato.sabbatini.com/index_p.php