Dental practice software has several components.  However, sometimes the components are more than just the software itself and how easy it is to use or not.

Dental Practice Software and Connected Components

There are three components connected to dental practice management software:

1. Personnel
   
2. Digital Sensors
   
3. Electronic Health Records
   
   

(1) Personnel

The first is personnel.

If you have a dental practice, it’s doubtful that as a dentist you are doing everything yourself.  Surely it wouldn’t make sense to do so to become a dentist because there is a fair amount of administrative training that you have to have. However, your strong suit should always be dental medicine, and often a specialty such as orthodontics, endodontics, and so forth.

With that said, you probably have personnel that work for you: a dental hygienist for teeth cleaning and oral care, an office manager for administration, an X-Ray or dental technician, and maybe even a receptionist.

If you have all of these people, they will need to work together, and your dental software should allow this to happen easily.  

In addition to personnel, there are two other components as well: digital sensors and electronic health records.

(2) Digital Sensors

Digital sensors are portable, digital solutions for dentists. Mainly it effectively record X-ray images of the patients teeth, yielding high resolution images with optical fibers. They employ a greater latitude of exposure to ensure the most high definition records are created in a wide range of exposure.

Digital sensors can resist shock, drops or bites and the sensors remote provides easy chair-side examinations. They can also be immersed in liquid disinfectant, which is a definite plus where they are concerned.

Obviously, if you do this with older film X-rays, it will probably ruin the image. Or it can even dissolve the film depending on the disinfectant that you use. Digital sensors tie into a bigger picture, which is the use of Electronic Health Records.

(3) Electronic Health Records

Electronic Health Records are thorough electronic records of patients that also are designed to create, manage and store all of patient records information digitally.

Dental software should also be able to access these records, and everyone from the dentist to all of the other personnel should be able to access them from a centralized interface.  What’s more, in the case of a dental practice with more than one location, there should be an interface that allows for shared access between office locations.

These are all key points of good dental software.