Article
Promoting public prevention with the new teeth4life App
After over 35 years as a GDP you can't help but get a little cynical, and the announcement by a government Health Secretary regarding prevention in November and the negative comments by the opposition party has a familiar ring to it. At our level, little will change. From what little information is available with the NHS 10-year plan announced this year, and outlined by the deputy CDO in December, Dentistry is not on the agenda.
Before I retire, I want to have some positive impact despite the governing body of the day. I initially made a webpage for my patients, and my hobby gradually got out of hand. The result is the teeth4life dental App. It has a scorecard and a traffic light system for early tooth loss, a score for risk of oral cancer, a video on self-monitoring, and a section for setting the appropriate monthly reminders for cancer as well as when to disclose your children's or your own teeth. It's an attempt to engage the 48% of adults who don't have a dentist but do have a phone, as the App can be easily distributed using social media on the front page.
Please download the App for free and view the USP of the cancer video, as it was prompted by a conversation by the stressed mother of a child with learning difficulties who took the relevant picture in the App video.
I have made the App using lean start-up or agile methodology, and what has been termed disruptive innovation, which in my case means the videos aren't perfect, but the sentiment is not far off. If we want to get lawyers off our backs, change the GDC, reduce our indemnity fee, enjoy our working day, and retain enough young dentists to look after us when we retire, we need to get the public on our side. Please ‘Squeeze Me’ to see the explanation for the public to use the App.
The supporting webpage for users is my original modified care4teeth. org with further links. The care4teeth.co.uk site is where you can view how the App can enhance your working day. If you want to read some excellent thought-provoking videos, go to the references section. The videos aren't mine.
The App is an attempt to help you restore some form of work-life balance to use the massive improvements in IT over the last 30 years. As Peter Drucker said, there is nothing so useless as doing something efficiently that should not be done at all. We spend more time typing when we should be working, and enable improved productivity and enjoyment.
Why can't we have the database from the GDC for all practising dentists available for the national LDC? The national LDC would then have the ability to set up a survey for all dentists on, for example, what is adequate treatment for specific procedures within the time and material constraints available. Also, dentists could then opt- in to engage with their local dental communities, advertise local courses and give support. The GDC shouldn't hide behind GDPR. Also the government of the day's ability to continue overseeing the majority of dentists by a divide and rule policy could potentially be undermined and, possibly under duress, bring in a core service. An online survey is something all dentists could engage in, for establishing what is loosely termed ‘dental fitness’. We could even get CPD for it. A lot of the ambiguity that the lawyers feed off, enabled by the loose NHS guidelines, could be vastly reduced. Now that would be a bit of typing I would be keen to do.
Please download the App, try it out, and give feedback. This is an individual effort, but as a collaborative project we could engage the public to improve their oral health appropriately on smartphones, as opposed to the one envisaged 70 years ago, when NHS dentistry was invented, and which has been gradually ignored ever since.