At any one time, the CDI has several ongoing research projects. As of spring 2007, ongoing projects include:

• Design of a natural language interface to electronic dental records (EDRs): This project intends to make it possible to interact with EDRs and other medical systems using natural, spoken language for data entry and retrieval.
• Evaluation of oral cancer information on the Web: This project reviews a selected set of oral cancer Websites in English and Spanish to determine content and Website quality.
• Redesign of electronic dental record (EDR) interfaces: Current user interfaces for EDRs do not support data entry, retrieval and decision-making optimally. This project aims to develop a reference design for EDRs that is more useful and usable than current systems for dental practice.
• 3D dental record project: This project is developing a 3D component for an EDR. With the system, it will be possible to interact with a 3D representation of the patient's dentition. The record will be annotated with clinical data.
• Dental diagnostic and findings vocabulary project: This project is evaluating how well existing controlled vocabularies are representing dental diagnoses and findings.
• Dental Informatics Online Community: This NLM-funded project will create an open, worldwide research community for people interested in dental informatics. A related project is our Online Research Community for the University of Pittsburgh's newly established Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI).

Interested? Do Research With Us!

Once completed, most of our research projects are published. For a list of our publications, please see the Reprint Service.