Ind. entities team for dental informatics program

Regenstrief Institute and the Indiana University (IU) School of Dentistry are collaborating to establish a dental informatics program.

The duo plan to create an agenda with a goal to implement its findings in dental offices and other points of care to advance oral disease prevention and treatment. The new program will also use both electronic dental and medical record data for clinical research to develop interoperable databases and advance the knowledge of oral health problems that cause various medical conditions.

The program will be linked to the Indiana Network for Patient Care (INPC) clinical data repository, which is managed by the Indiana Health Information Exchange. Thankam Thyvalikakath, DMD, PhD, an associate professor at the IU School of Dentistry and a research scientist at the Regenstrief Institute, will lead the program.

"With this new partnership between the dental school and Regenstrief Institute, we will be well positioned to use the growing amount of data being collected by dentists and researchers to advance oral health and overall health for individuals everywhere," said Carol Anne Murdoch-Kinch, DDS, dean of the IU School of Dentistry, in a statement.

This partnership is not the first endeavor between Regenstrief Institute and IU School of Dentistry. In January 2016, the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR) awarded a $1.2 million grant to the institute and university to study dental treatment outcomes.