Information and Communication Technologies (ICTS) in Dentistry for SUS

University of Sao Paulo

Status: Unknown

Conditions: Dental Caries in Children; Dental Diseases

Treatments: Other: Control Group - Waiting list; Other: Telemonitoring and teleorientation

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT04798599

TeleDent-COVID19

Details and patient eligibility

About

At the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, thousands of children had their dental care interrupted or postponed, generating a pent-up demand for primary care. In order to minimize the impact of this outage of face-to-face care, information and communication technologies could be an alternative and even likely to be envisioned within the Brazilian Unified Health System (SUS). In this sense, this study sought to show the impact of the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the resolution of the pent-up demand for primary dental care to children in the SUS, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, proposing the use of telemonitoring, teleorientation and telescreening to resolve and address demands arising from this outage in primary elective care. The impact of the use of these strategies will be measured in terms of problem-solving, reduction of waiting time to resolve complaints and caregivers' perception about received care. For this, two clinical studies were designed and a primarily trial-based economic evaluation was planned. Mathematical models will be used to transpose these results into the reality of the SUS, in view of the State Health Secretariat of São Paulo and different Brazilian scenarios. Finally, the investigators also aim to study the possibility of implementing these technologies mentioned in the daily life of the SUS, even after a pandemic, and to check the possibility of incorporating and costing them, as well as exploring possible social impact and relationship with possible inequities in health.

Full description

Project Objectives:

This proposal has as a general objective to show the impact of the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) on the resolution of the pent-up demand for primary dental care to children in the SUS, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

To this do so, the following specific objectives are defined:

1. To identify the pent-up demand for the outage of dental care and the benefits and difficulties, as well as the perception of users, in the implementation of new strategies of non-face-to-face care based on technology (teleservice), using a primary care cell unit for children and prospecting, through models, this situation for the scenario of the Unified Health System (SUS).
2. Perform different forms of economic evaluation to measure whether the gains achieved with the implementation of teleservice (telescreening, teleorientation and telemonitoring) compensate for the additional costs possibly associated with it, or whether teleservice modalities are associated with long-term resource savings, taking into account the implementation sized for the Brazilian public health system.
3. Explore how the introduction of these technologies could benefit the SUS in the trans and post-pandemic period, contribute to the correction of possible inequities in health care and other social aspects, as well as result in possible differences when different Brazilian scenarios are explored.

Enrollment: 368 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: 3 to 13 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Children from 3 to 13 years old who are involved in clinical studies and who already undergo follow-up from 6 to 60 months in the mobile dental unit.

Exclusion criteria

• Guardian´s participants) who do not accept to participate in the research and if participants accept.
• Children who do not assent with participation in the research (when already literate). - For children aged 3 to 6 years, included in the research, the waiver of the need to fill out the term of free and informed assent was requested, considering that these children are not literate and would not be able to write, to assent with the participation. t

Trial design

Primary purpose: Supportive Care

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Triple Blind

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368 participants in 2 patient groups

Intervention

Experimental group

Description:

In the intervention group there will be the application of the intervention - use of telemonitoring and teleorientation applied to children in primary care in Dentistry.

Treatment:

Other: Telemonitoring and teleorientation

Waiting list

Active Comparator group

Description:

In the control group, children waiting to be booked to the intervention (in implementation in the unit because of the pandemic) will be evaluated for the outcomes. Only after the evaluation, the control group's children will be invited to perform the teleconsultation (proposed intervention).

Treatment:

Other: Control Group - Waiting list