A computer software package to facilitate clinical audit of outpatient paediatric dentistry

This paper reports the development and function of a computer program for clinical audit of outpatients in hospital paediatric dentistry in the United Kingdom. The project was one of several national audit projects supported by the Faculty of Dental Surgery, Royal College of Surgeons of England, and funded by the Department of Health. The software is designed to record data utilizing a nationally-agreed minimum set of codes for dental diagnosis, treatment and medical complications, together with patient demographic details pertaining to source of referral, age and sex of patient, and area of residence. A significant component of the software is a flexible report generator which allows data to be analysed using any combination of the above criteria. Audit of activity in hospital dentistry is desirable to enable comparisons to be made between groups of patients and treatments related to diagnosis. This provides the information necessary to enable improvements in clinical practice whilst also assisting the development of both local and national clinical guidelines. Use of this software package will enable such comparisons to be made not only within one hospital but also between different hospital and regions in the United Kingdom.