Monitoring patient compliance to dental home care instructions with the mobile-based ecosystem.

Abstract

Background: Caries risk assessment and management from the cornerstone for successfully applying a minimum intervention dentistry philosophy in managing dental caries. Most applied work on caries prevention acknowledges the role of oral hygiene and dietary control strategies in reducing the prevalence and incidence of caries. What we need to address, however, is the necessity of initiating and sustaining behaviors that will ensure the implementation of strategies, that is "patient compliance."

Aims and objectives: To present a novel method to monitor oral health-care behavior on a day-to-day basis and guide the parent-child team to set self-help goals. In addition, sustain them over time until the oral environment has positively changed and improved in caries risk status.

Methodology: A mobile-based application and digital ecosystem have been developed to record daily data, motivate the user and present it as monthly and periodic graphic output. This supplements other caries risk assessment methods employed in recall follow-up to understand the changing oral environment.

Results and conclusion: Pilot trial results are promising and our mobile-based application seems to be definite adjuvant in improving and monitoring patient compliance.