A Survey on dental personnel’s perceptions of digital dentistry and dental digital equipment

Abstract

The purpose of this survey was to assess the perceptions of dental personnel concerning digital dentistry and dental digital equipment. The survey was conducted from July to August 2019 in Busan and Gyeongnam area. Three sets of questionnaires were designed to target dental professionals and staff, dental industry personnel, and dental students. The questionnaires were composed of best-choice questions, multiple-choice questions, and questions with the five-point Likert scale. Frequency analysis, descriptive statistics, and one-way ANOVA were used for data analysis. A total of 141 dental personnel participated in the survey: 92 dental professionals and staff, 29 dental industry personnel, and 20 dental students. The time saving was the most frequent response to the benefits of digital dentistry in all job categories. The main barrier to dental digital equipment introduction was the high cost. Although the evaluation of the economic efficiency of dental digital equipment was not positive, sixty-seven percent of dental professionals and staff having no digital equipment responded that they were considering purchasing dental digital equipment. They were most interested in intra-oral scanners.In conclusion, dental personnel were positively aware of the utility of dental digital equipment and interested in introducing new equipment. How-ever, high initial costs and uncertain economic efficiency were found to be the main barriers to using dental digital equipment.