Effectiveness of an oral health education programme using a mobile application for older adults: A randomised clinical trial

Abstract

Korean society is faced with numerous changes as a result of the accelerated ageing of the population and advances in and penetration of information technology (IT). 1 Korea officially became an aged society in 2018, with older adults comprising 14.3% of the total population. 2 As for the extent of IT penetration in Korea, the personal smartphone ownership rate in 2017 was 83.2%, which is one of the highest among Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. 3 Increased penetration and utilisation of IT, such as computers, the Internet and smartphones, is an important factor in older adults' daily lives and quality of life. 4,5 In keeping with this trend, there is a growing need for smartphonebased oral health education. 6 Maintaining older adults' oral health is necessary for sustaining systemic health and quality of life. 7,8 Oral health education is essential to improve the oral health of older adults at a high level. 8 With the expanse of the IT environment, it is necessary to consider using smart devices for imparting oral health education. 6 In the past, oral health education for older adults has been conducted offline at sites such as hospitals, welfare facilities and public health centres; however, these programmes had several limitations. 9For example, physical space is essential to provide the programme, the participants must be physically present, and the anticipated

Effectiveness of e-learning to promote oral health education: A systematic review and meta-analysis

“…Subsequently, 221 abstracts and full-text articles were assessed by the first exclusion criteria. Eventually, the review yielded 19 publications [17,21,[32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48] in qualitative synthesis (Table 1), and 9 [21,33,35,36,39,42,44,46,47] in quantitative synthesis by the second exclusion criteria. Table 1 indicated the characteristics of collected studies in qualitative synthesis.…”

“…Additionally, 5 studies used phone calls webinars, videos, and web-based training programs on the internet. Although Al-Ak’hali et al, [ 33 ] Mohebbi et al, [ 43 ] and Lee et al [ 47 ] combined e-learning method with conventional method for oral health education, they could investigate respectively the effect of using e-learning compared to conventional education since both test and control group were given same conventional educational method.…”

“…A lower score showed better oral hygiene management regarding dental plaque. Lee et al [ 47 ] calculated without multiplying by 100 (%).…”

“…[54] The O'Leary Index [55] was used in an experiment. [47] This index score recorded 4 tooth surfaces (facial, lingual, mesial, distal) on the gingival margin by assessing the presence or absence of dental plaque and calculated the formula as follows: total number of presence surfaces with dental plaque/the number of tooth surfaces × 100 (%). A lower score showed better oral hygiene management regarding dental plaque.…”

Effectiveness of an Oral Health Education Program Using a Smart Toothbrush with Quantitative Light-Induced Fluorescence Technology in Children

“…What can open the door to teledentistry is a special toothbrush, called a smart toothbrush (ST). Children are instructed to brush with the ST while viewing the instruction (rolling method) video on the smartphone’s display [ 13 ].…”