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MOBILE CLINIC TO EMPLOY DIGITAL
TECHNOLOGY
Through a joint project between
USC and Childrens Hospital Los Angeles, the USCSD mobile
clinic is poised to become the first non-military dental
clinic in the United States to utilize digital imaging and the
Internet to diagnose and treatment plan patients in remote
locations.
Daniel
Plotkin (left) and John Meara hope the teledentistry
project will broaden the scope and effectiveness of
the mobile clinic. |
The technology, known as
teledentistry, will allow a single dentist to make digital
x-rays and intra-oral photographs of patients in underserved,
remote locations and send that information via the Internet to
servers at the School of Dentistry. Once downloaded, the
digital information will be examined by dental students who
will work under the supervision of faculty to develop
appropriate treatment plans. These treatment plans will allow
the mobile clinic faculty and staff to make preparations in
advance of their arrival.
“They will not be going in
blind, far from it. They’re going in knowing exactly who
they’re going to be seeing, how many kids, how many fillings
they’re going to be doing, how many extractions, sealants,
etc. The possibilities are endless,” says Daniel Plotkin,
teledentistry project coordinator at Childrens Hospital Los
Angeles.
The project is the brain child
of John Meara, a craniofacial plastic surgeon at CHLA who
holds dual faculty appointments with the Keck School of
Medicine and the School of Dentistry. Meara believes the
project will not only allow the mobile clinic to be more
efficient, but expand and improve the services offered.
With the ability to identify
oral health problems that would require a dental specialist,
such as an endodontist, the mobile clinic may now arrange to
have the appropriate faculty on hand to handle these more
complex cases. Follow up exams could be preformed by a single
dentist and his findings sent digitally to the respective
specialist at USCSD.
“The mobile clinic has done a
wonderful job of providing service to rural areas, however
there are limitations in having to physically go out with the
mobile clinic and do everything. I think it adds another facet
to the work that they have been doing,” Meara says.
In the future, teledentistry
may also allow the mobile clinic to offer orthodontic services
as well, something rarely seen in these underserved areas.
Utilizing 3-D intra-oral tomography technology pioneered by
faculty member James Mah, Meara hopes to capture images in the
field that would greatly reduce the number of visits required
for successful orthodontic treatment.
Meara and Plotkin are hoping to
pilot the program in Kern County in early 2003. They are
working with Roseann Mulligan, director of community health
programs at the School of Dentistry, to finalize the details
and logistics of the project.
“Teledentistry could
potentially be a real asset for the mobile clinic program. It
could allow us to make the most of our limited resources and
provide more services to a greater number of people. That’s
really the bottom line for the mobile clinic, providing care
to those in need,” Mulligan says.
The Teledentistry Project is
funded, in part, by grants from The Harold McAlister
Charitable Foundation and The California Wellness Foundation (TCWF).
Created in 1992 as an independent, private foundation, TCWF’s
mission is to improve the health of the people of California
by making grants for health promotion, wellness education, and
disease prevention programs.
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