Orthodontics in the era of big data analytics

Abstract

The objective of this report was to provide an overview of the current landscape of big data analytics in the healthcare sector, introduce various approaches of machine learning and discuss potential implications in the field of orthodontics. With the increasing availability of data from various sources, the traditional analytical methods may not be conducive anymore for examining clinical outcomes. Machine-learning approaches, which are algorithms trained to identify patterns in large data sets, are ideally suited to facilitate data-driven decision making. The field of orthodontics is particularly ripe for embracing the big data analytics platform to improve decision making in clinical practice. The availability of omics data, state-of-the-art imaging and potential for establishing large clinical data repositories have favourably positioned the specialty of orthodontics to deliver personalized and precision orthodontic care. Specifically, we discuss about next-generation sequencing, radiomics in the context of CBCT imaging, and how centralized data repositories can enable real-time data pooling from multiple sources.