The AAO Electronic Records Committee is seeking new members as it works toward development of standards that will make operability of the electronic health record efficient, useful and most of all, accurate upon display when used for orthodontic patients.

AAO Electronic Records Committee Projects

The AAO team works as part of the American Dental Association Standards Committee on Dental Informatics (SCDI).  This committee is divided into three categories with working groups that fall under one of the following areas:  Information Exchange, Clinical Informatics and Knowledge Management.

Working with the SCDI, the AAO Electronic Records Committee participates in two types of projects: SNODENT (Systematized Nomenclature of Dentistry), and development of technology standards such as orthodontic lab prescriptions and visible light displays which depict the patient by means of digital photography. In addition to developing new orthodontic standards, the group must ensure that the existing standards are kept updated and relevant as new technologies become available and are applied in orthodontic treatment.

The committee meets two times a year for three days:

  • In February or early March, and
  • In conjunction with the ADA Annual Session held each fall.

An additional ½-day meeting is held during each year’s AAO Annual Session.

If you have strong interest in technology and would like to volunteer for the Electronic Records Committee, please contact Andrew Wiltsch at [email protected].

Input to the ADA Flows to Practice Management Software Developers

The entire dental profession and specialties are providing input to the SCDI via 24 working groups with assignments related to development of dental standards for dental practice systems, diagnostics, clinical peripheral devices and software, electronic data interchange (EDI), computer-based patient record interfaces along with dental and research systems.  The work of these groups is overseen by the ADA SCDI Oversight Committee, whose members make certain that work undertaken by participating groups stays within scope. The Oversight Committee is also the consensus body that approves all proposed standards.

Approved standards are forwarded to an ADA council for approval as an ADA standard.  Standards adopted by the ADA are then routed to the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) for approval as American national standards.  These standards are used by the practice management software developers to create systems that communicate patient record information available for access by dental industry providers.