Recording system for the Danish Child Dental Health Services

ABSTRACT In pursuance of an Act on Child Dental Health of 1971, free preventive and therapeutic dental care will eventually be available to all schoolchildren in Denmark. For regional and national evaluation and planning of the Child Dental Health Services, a standardized data system was developed to record information on (1) identification, (2) caries status, (3) plaque and gingivitis indices, (4) oral mucosal diseases, and (5) malocclusion. The system is based on registrations of all children receiving public dental care. Computer processing utilizes Optical Character Recognition, which permits handwritten signs to be entered as input for identification by an optical reading unit. The record form serves as direct computer input. A duplicate provides a supplement to the patient's records to assist in the planning of dental care for the individual child. Analysis of the data will provide summary statistics, comprising DMF-S and def-s indices, gingivitis and plaque indices, and frequencies of malocclusion. These will be published annually for the country as a whole. Furthermore, similar statistics applying to the individual dental services will be available to the municipalities.