INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN ORAL HEALTH

Telemedicine is transferring medical data between geographically separated areas. There are many application areas and different technologies can be used. Telemedicine has been used in medicine for many years. However, the use of telemedicine in dentistry is very little. Teledentistry has the potential to be a highly effective mechanism for enhancing early diagnosis and to be used in dental education. In a developing country such as Turkey, teledentisty is a necessity for tomorrow. This study aims to determine dental professionals ’ attitudes to teledentistry as means of providing consultation, diagnosis, monitoring and dental education in order to introduce teledentistry. An anonymous, self-administered survey of dental professions in Turkey was conducted by personally meeting each individual. 219 participants comprised dentists, assistants, dental students, technicians and dental educators. The data was analyzed. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize the demographic and survey data. Comparisons between median Likert scale responses were performed using the Mann-Whitney U test. The authors have developed a profile of current dental professionals in the city of Ankara, i.e. the capital of Turkey. The statistical analyses demonstrate that the majority (80%) of the survey participants considered teledentistry to have potential and reported that it has to be integrate