Journal

dCStory: Patient Education

Patient education tools play a critical role in sending difficult to understand clinical information to patients in an easy-to-understand style. This app provides several options of treatment plans and educational counseling with the help of high-definition 3D images.

Patients can see more than 200 complex dental procedures, X-rays and photos. This app also gives you the opportunity to write out or sketch extra data on the image itself with the help of a stylus. This data can be printed or mailed online to the patient for viewing and reading at home.

DDS GP (Dental Demo Suite General Practice): Patient Education

Dental Demo Suite GP (DDS GP) is the most wide-ranging app for patient education. With this app, patients can see numerous dental problems and their treatments. Stock images are part of this app, but patient images can also be uploaded into an image library. With each image, particular points relating to a dental condition can be marked for discussion. This app is available on Blackberry, Android and iOS platforms.

Canvas, Note Taker HD, GoodNotes, Penultimate: Patient Forms/Clinical Note Taking

Using this app, patient history forms and your clinical notes can be entered and saved on laptops or PCs which are synced with mobile phones. Here, you can also get predesigned forms for dental history in app form and data entry with barcode scanning.

Apart from Canvas, other apps like Note Taker HD, GoodNotes and Penultimate have provision for notes to be taken freehand directly onto a tablet phone and saved on it as a digital file. Here, PDF files can also be uploaded and interpreted for you and your patients to understand and record as required documentation.

Box: Data Access & Management

This cloud-based app lets users create and share folders and files safely from a computer or mobile. At your practice, this app can be used as a back up to manage your documents in digital format and put them all together in one online platform. These documents could be patient history forms or consent forms for operations that can be saved when completed and exchanged through a good online file sharing medium and later accessed even at reception or any other location.

This gives you and your staff the advantage of working on these forms and documents at a location away from the practice. It also provides data encryption facilities and is capable of handling several file types such as, docx, .pdf and .xls.

ePocrates Rx

This app is a free online clinical reference library whose scope extends to being a guide for drugs, provider of information for formulations and a checker of drug interactions. It also provides free updates on medical news and is easy to download and use.

It is available in several versions, particularly those that deal in data on diagnosis of the disease, images, alternative medicine, diagnostic tests, insurance and a medical dictionary whose price ranges from $99 to $199 annually. With this app, you can easily access vast chunks of information relating to drugs for adults and children and their dosages, contraindications and interactions. It always presents updated information and is easily accessible.

Dental Expert

If you have patients who want to know just what you are going to do for them and why, perhaps you, as a dentist, should invest in the app Dental Expert. This app is one great resource that provides such information to your patients.

From this app, your patients can get not just general information, but also handy tips on practicing good dental habits. It also gives you options on what kind of dental care you should take, should you have a few teeth missing or damaged. It also explains the hallowed procedure, root canal treatment.

Once your patients are knowledgeable about their oral health, they will come in to your office for a checkup undaunted, which will help you to serve them better and instill confidence in them while in the dentist’s chair.

MyDentist

Provided by Dental Anywhere, this app is perhaps the best in the realm of patient communication. Using this app, patients can explain their problems to you by sending you text, diagrams and photos. When you receive their messages, you can send them succinct instructions, particularly in times of emergency. With this mode of communication, you can fix appointments with your patients, among other things.

Medscape Mobile

If you want a ready reckoner for clinical referencing, this one is the best. By using this app, you can check on the correct dosages to prescribe your patients, besides also looking up drug interactions, if any. It also keeps updating news in the dental world. Medscape Mobile is free to use and is available on all platforms such as iOS, Android and Blackberry.

Dental Manager

With this app, you can calculate your costs and set up a treatment plan for patients, by downloading this onto your Smartphone. You can also track your patients and have their detailed notes and contact details. Using this app’s cost assessment tool and treatment planning tool, you can discuss with your patients and arrive at the best solution for an improvement in their oral health. Sharing information between co-workers is another facility offered here.

SocialDental

SocialDental allows you to capture the culture of your dental practice and post it to social media in a compliant way. You can even take photos of patients. They can sign on the screen to give their permission for the post before you send it to your social media page. You have a record of the agreement, and they get to be featured in your marketing – a win/win proposition.

View 2-D and 3-D images from Panmeca X-ray units on your iPad. You can use these images for patient education or to consult with a colleague. You can share them on mobile devices, zoom in, measure the images and search all patient images on the databsase. The app works in conjunction with the Romexis desktop software.

Lexi-Dental Complete

A Lexicomp mobile app, Lexi-Dental Complete accesses Lexicomp’s entire extensive library. Databases accessible through the app include pharmacological information in Lexi-Drug, food/medication reactions in Lexi-Interaction, diagnostic information and patient education resources. The app provides comprehensive information at your fingertips, wherever you are, whenever you need it.

Mavro: Dental Spanish Guide

The Dental Spanish Guide app is perfect for dentists who don’t speak Spanish but need to communicate with patients who only speak that language. The app allows dentists to choose phrases pertinent to dental treatments and relay those messages to their Spanish-speaking patient. Another feature of the app is a flash card feature that helps dentists practice important phrases between patients.

Orasphere

Would you like to explain a complex procedure to a patient in a way they can understand? Orasphere, an iPhone app, features an assortment of videos for patient education. The patient can view the procedure to better understand the treatment you are about to give, and you can reduce your liability by providing full pre-treatment information at the same time.While some dentists have complained that the app needs a greater variety of videos, most agree that the graphics of the existing videos are outstanding. The good news is there are more videos coming soon.

Download the app in itunes, click here.

Dental RX

Also at your iTunes store, you can find a handy app called Dental RX. Use the app to send a complete prescription to your dental lab. The prescription can include all the different fields necessary for any lab work, including dentin color, midline and occlusal plane. You can also add photos to the RX for even more comprehensive instructions.

Download the app in itunes, click here.