The National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research within the National Institutes of Health released a much anticipated report today titled, Oral Health in America: Advances and Challenges. The new report is a follow-up to the Surgeon General’s Report on Oral Health in America, and explores the nation’s oral health over the last 20 years.
Dr. Wenyuan Shi, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Scientific Officer of The Forsyth Institute, served as an Associate Editor for Section 6 of the report, Emerging Science and Promising Technologies to Transform Oral Health.
“This landmark report confirms that oral health is at a critical inflection point where science and technology will completely transform the field in the coming years,” says Dr. Shi. “Forsyth has intentionally invested in expanding our research portfolio in the areas of bio-inspired dental materials, AI and dental imaging, microbiome, and genomics, aligning with the most promising advances in emerging science as outlined in this report.”
Key findings from Section 6 include:
- Discoveries related to the microbiome, genomics, and other omics offer promise for individualizing oral health care and revealing relationships among systemic diseases, suggesting possibilities for new treatments.
- Discoveries in cellular analyses and regenerative medicine are leading to new treatments to improve oral health, including techniques and products created for bone and soft tissue regeneration that currently are being used in clinical settings.
- The field of data science has grown considerably in the past 20 years, offering improved opportunities in “big” data analytics using integrated electronic health records and other large health databases for analyses as computing power has become more robust and efficient.
Read the full report: https://www.nidcr.nih.gov/oralhealthinamerica
