Dentaltown March 2018 - 84

dentists as well as other providers to treat patients based on comprehensive health information,
rather than just oral disease. The center will also facilitate research that could help future
dentists treat patients based on thousands of parameters-genomic, environmental and
more-rather than just the handful used today.
Among the data-collecting technologies the center will be using are the aforementioned
wireless tracking instruments and a dental chair serving as a data-collection hub. RFID
tags attached to dental instruments, supplies, and student and faculty ID badges, as well
as sensors in the dental chair, will collect never-before-measured data such as in what angle
the patient was seated, for how long and during what procedure an instrument was used.
The feedback instructors provide to students will now be measurable, allowing them to
become more efficient and precise with their care.

"When something bad is happening, don't wait until the
procedure's over; shoot up a flag and say, 'Hey, send over a
faculty member. The student may need help with this patient.' "
- Steven Erde, MD, PhD, chief information officer, Columbia
University College of Dental Medicine
The dental chair, assuming a larger role in the instructor/student and patient/provider
interaction, will feature two video cameras, allowing an instructor to view a procedure as it
occurs from the student's point of view and provide specific feedback on the procedure, as
opposed to the procedure's result. The chair also will collect data that determines a patient's
stress levels, providing students with real-time information about the patient's comfort.
"If you look at a typical surgical procedure in a hospital or in a procedure room, nobody
collects this kind of data," said Steven Erde, MD, PhD, Columbia University College of
Dental Medicine's chief information officer. "They might collect biometric data, heart data
and respiration data, but data about the instrumentation itself and how it's been used? I
don't think anybody has that kind of data except maybe with surgical robots like da Vinci
or something like that where they might have a log of data."
Describing the data-collecting process, Erde said, "In a typical environment, patients
are going to come into [the center's] waiting area. They'll get registered into the electronic
health record and get a bracelet that will be like every other hospital bracelet, but rather than
having a bar code it will have a RFID chip in it. The difference between a RFID chip and
a bar code is that the chip can be read at a distance, whereas with a bar code, you've got to
read that with a scanner-not a lot of difference from the standpoint of privacy and security.
"Patient IDs and chart numbers will be listed just as they are with every other bar code
wristband in every hospital. What we'll have, though, is the ability to follow the patients
in the facility to track their movements; for example, how long they're waiting, when they
get to the dental chair, and when the provider shows up," Erde continued.
"The patient's RFID tag will be detected by the chair, so the data collected will be
tagged to the patient. Additionally, providers will have RFID chips in their IDs that will
also be detected by the chair. The stream of data that is then generated by the procedure
will have both provider and patient data stored in it."

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MARCH 2018 // dentaltown.com
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Dentaltown March 2018
