Development of an Inter-University Oral Health Research Database

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Despite great advances in dentistry during the past decade, dentists, administrators, educators, researchers, and epidemiologists have had limited access to oral health datasets in the US. Our long term goal is improving oral health by facilitating dental patient care quality improvement, research, educational advancement and discovery. The objective of this application is to establish an Oral Health Data Repository that can accept and integrate data from disparate dental data sources, and allow end users to explore and extract information to support their specific research or decision making needs. In this project, the University of Texas Houston, Tufts University, Harvard School of Dental Medicine and the University of California, San Francisco, dental Schools will contribute de-identified data to the proposed repository. We seek to integrate specific data elements from these four Dental Schools into a user-friendly and secure repository. In aim 1 we will refine policies and procedures for data stewardship and governance. In aim 2 we will integrate data from the four dental schools. In aim 3 we will develop and implement a user portal that allows different levels and granularity of access by end users. Level 1 users will be allowed to view summary level data regarding prevalence of diseases or conditions across the population. Level 2 users will have access to browse and explore the database. Level 3 users will have access to a specific dataset after submitting a research application. And finally in aim 4, we will evaluate the developed resource by conducting a summative evaluation of the system over a 6-month period after users interact with the system at their home institutions. We will focus the evaluation on how the data are used, usability and security of the system, and determine how the system can be improved. The project is innovative because we seek to create the first comprehensive inter-university oral health dataset for researchers and clinicians. We expect that this project will have a positive impact not only for researchers, but also for frontline clinicians, educators and administrators, who will be able to determine best practices and explore national trends in a large patient population seeking dental care.