Attitudes of UK consultants to teledentistry as a means of providing orthodontic advice to dental practitioners and their patients

Abstract

Objective: To determine UK orthodontic consultants' attitudes to the provision of orthodontic advice to general dental practitioners by electronic means.

Design: Questionnaire.

Setting: Conducted by email and surface mail as appropriate in August 2000.

Subjects: All those UK NHS orthodontic consultants contained in the membership lists of the Consultant Orthodontists Group of the British Orthodontic Society.

Outcome: An 86 per cent response was obtained from the 231 consultants.

Results: More than half (58 per cent) of the consultants were interested in providing an electronic diagnostic service for the general dental practitioners in their locality and 70 per cent were in favour of further research into this possibility. Provided this was mediated through their GDP, only 26% would oppose consultant advice being given electronically from a centralized source.

Conclusions: A majority of UK orthodontic consultants support the concept of using teledentistry to make their advice more accessible to dentists and patients.

Keywords:

• Orthodontic diagnosis
• orthodontic referral
• telemedicine

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to than all members of the Consultant Orthodontist Group and in particular Mr N. W. T. Harradine and Mr N. E. Carter without whom this survey would not have been possible.