Applications of digital technology in dental public health: A narrative review

Abstract
Digital technologies in dental public health are being used in a variety of ways to improve healthcare, reduce health care costs, and improve performance of public health programs. This narrative review summarises the important applications of digital technologies in the field of dental public health and initiatives of Government of India towards digitization of public health system. Literature review through various databases like Web of Science, Pub Med, Scopus, Cinahl, PUBMED, Google Scholar, Embase, ScienceDirect, Directory of Open Access Journals was done. Results of review highlight the effective use of digital technology in the development of electronic health records (EHRs); personalised medicine and health data linkage; clinical decision support for novel treatment concepts and deep learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI) for diagnostic analysis. Adoption of mobile technologies in the dental field is fundamentally transforming how dental healthcare is viewed, given, and consumed. However, lack of data security and protection laws, technical infrastructure, advanced biological sensors, orientation among public health workers, linguistic diversity, patients’ fear and unfamiliarity makes the application of digital technology in dental public health practice challenging.