Prof. Wolff, dentistry and medicine are closely interwoven. Do you believe that there is a need for further integration of medical and dental care? If so, why?
Absolutely! There are many reasons why this is important. The first is that people are living longer, they have increasingly complex medical conditions and they are being treated with a multitude of medications. Each of these may influence the ability to deliver safe and ever more complex dental care to our patients.
Interprofessional interaction can improve patient care, delivering better patient-centred care to more patients. There are large segments of patients who do not seek dental care. EHRs will help health providers recognise that a patient may have neglected his or her mouth, helping reduce emergency room visits, loss of work time owing to dental pain and even more severe sequelae in other health outcomes.

How is FDI’s Integrated Electronic Health Records in Dentistry project contributing to enhanced interprofessional collaboration and integrated healthcare in dentistry?
The project aims to identify best practices for and barriers to integrating dental and medical EHRs. It will determine how and what information should be captured from health records to improve patient-centred dental care, addressing the overwhelming amount of available health information for dental practitioners. Additionally, the project will identify what dental information can help other health practitioners enhance overall patient health, thus contributing to improved oral health and overall patient satisfaction.

Some countries, such as Estonia and Denmark, already provide access to integrated EHRs for patients. Why should other countries consider implementing similar systems?
The key to change is understanding best practices that may exist already. We have the opportunity to look at several countries and several health systems that are already effectively communicating between oral health and other medical systems. This will help better inform our processes.

“Interprofessional interaction can improve patient care, delivering better patient-centred care to more patients.”

What factors are slowing down the integration of dental and medical EHRs?
There are many barriers to integrating the dental EHR with the medical EHR, not the least of which is the fact that there are already many different EHRs globally, both dental and medical. These differences frequently require new integrations with the various existing systems. Another difficulty is the cost. Practitioners in many countries are responsible for absorbing the cost of EHRs themselves. In other countries, there is a national health plan that includes all EHRs except for dentistry. The integration may or may not be mandated, provided or funded by the government.

You will be lecturing on the perspectives of integrating dental and medical EHRs at the 2024 FDI World Dental Congress. What are the key points you plan to discuss in your presentation?
We will speak about the value of integrating dental EHRs with medical EHRs, such as the ability to improve the quality of care for all of our patients and the opportunity for us to increase access to much-needed dental care in the world.

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