Teledentistry is a reasonably recent development in dentistry that’s gaining popularity amongst dentists. If you have dental or oral health issues, it can be difficult to make an appointment that fits into your schedule. Thus, you can easily connect remotely with a live dentist and receive information and advice with this modern strategy.
Virtual Access to Dentists Live Through Teledentistry
Teledentistry is a subcategory of telehealth, a broad notion that encompasses all aspects of professional healthcare. In its simplest form, Telehealth seeks to provide patients with a number of options that they can access remotely. Remote health care can be provided via video teleconferencing and audio calling, amongst others.
This enables collection and exchange of data sets with dental practitioners. This information can be used to help in the performance of appropriate dental care, including diagnostics, assessment and treatment.
In addition, dental information can be sent to dental specialists specializing in certain areas of dentistry if needed.
Teledental consultation is feasible from virtually any location. It could be through a video conference call between the dentist directly and the patient to address an immediate problem, for example. This can help patients avoid unnecessary hospitalizations and release dental office chairs.
Due to the convenience of virtual consultations, more and more dental clinics have started offering them.
Benefits of Teledentistry (Virtual Live Dentist)
Benefits for patients
In emergency situations, patients can be directly connected remotely with live dentists. This interaction allows the dentist to assess the situation more precisely, prescribe medicine, and also save you time, money and anxiety when visiting a hospital or dental clinic. As a result, travel is minimized, and waiting periods at the dental practice are shortened.
Teledentistry is also cheaper while still offering top quality services. In addition, you and your family can choose a dentist based on reasons aside from practice location. This makes it easy to get a second opinion from a specialist who may be geographically far from you.
There are even live dentists available 24 hours a day, which greatly benefits patients.
Benefits for dentists
Since the patient doesn’t need to visit the clinic often, the time spent sitting in the chair will be reduced. Consultations can be carried out virtually, allowing you to treat more patients every day.
After surgery, patients aren’t required to come for follow-up; You can simply communicate with them electronically.
Patients — and dentists — can get a second opinion through teledentistry. If you need a second opinion from another dentist, you can easily get it through a digital consultation.
In addition, dentists benefit from the ability to communicate with patients even in remote locations. This broadens your patient base and reach.
Cases Where Teledentistry Applies
Public health
Teledentistry can assist dentists in connecting with numerous communities in the public health sector. Mobile hygiene campaigns in schools and hospitals became more accessible and efficient. The teledentist can evaluate the photos collected by the nurse to more proficiently identify any problems.
Private Practice
Teledentistry facilitates the integration of private practice and outreach activities. This allows your dental practice to carry out social responsibilities while reducing the time it takes to do so.
Alongside outreach, you can grow your personal practice by strengthening bonds with specialists through increased engagement and connecting them with your clients as needed.
Medical-Dental Merger
Better care often requires better collaboration between dental and medical departments. Teledentistry enables clients to receive more comprehensive care by connecting dentists with other health specialists.
Additionally, it helps reduce diversion of urgent clients by eliminating the need for guesswork when doctors can consult dentists virtually about clients’ conditions.
Patient Geared Dental Products & Services
Until recently, properly straightening or whitening teeth required many visits to the dentist and a significant amount of money. An innovative teledentistry company is now providing remote teeth alignment and whitening services. In this way, millions of individuals will have access to advanced dental care at affordable prices.
Challenges with Teledentistry
While teledentistry has many advantages, there are still numerous challenges that can stop professionals from fully embracing and applying this digital approach to dentistry. These difficulties manifest themselves on multiple levels: personal, institutional and infrastructural.
An apparent disadvantage for dentists is the absence of one-on-one examinations with their patients. In addition, technological literacy is still limited in several places. There may be a reduction in the accuracy and quality of available health information, in addition to an unsustainable increase in dentist virtual clinic time and their workload.
In terms of infrastructure, many remote locations lack internet connection and technological support. In addition, modern digital technologies may seem too complicated to many.
Finally, there’s a lack of reimbursement mechanisms and tax norms at the organizational level. In addition, there’s a greater risk of malpractice and legal complications related to implementing teledentistry.
Additional Challenges to Focus with Teledentristy
Incorporating teledentistry into dental practice requires dentists and staff to be open to technological advances. While the absence of direct patient interaction may seem uncomfortable at first, most dentists and their colleagues quickly adapt.
Patients may initially hesitate to try teledentistry because of an absence of technological skills, an absence of interest, or the impression that this new method of treatment is too difficult. However, the tremendous growth of telemedicine has gradually made virtual triage the benchmark of care.
Virtual assessments and treatment plans can raise concerns about accuracy and reliability, but these are issues that can easily be addressed by applying high professional standards and cumulative expertise. The remaining areas of definition are legal (cross-jurisdictional licensing, malpractice insurance, and online information protection) and reimbursement (applicability, liability, and taxation).
Conclusion
Teledentistry, when done in the right way, has the potential to be a game-changer. It has the opportunity to provide dental care to people who don’t have access to dental care. Teledentistry is gaining popularity in the dental sector because of its many benefits for dentists and patients.
