What's your news?
Do you have any interesting news on dental technology or computing you would like to share with the community? Our 1,200+ members visit the site regularly and receive news updates just like this one. This is great opportunity for you to post your news for a large worldwide audience. For example, you can share:

• Job openings. We have over 1,200 members from 72 different countries, the largest group of people interested in dental informatics worldwide. Through the DIOC you can target dental informatics professionals who will be the perfect match for your open position.
• Interesting papers you have recently published. Our publication archive is the most accessed section of the DIOC and it is searched daily by members. If your paper(s) are listed in Medline, we can include them in our database. Including your work in the DIOC will make it easy for others to find it!
• Grants or projects. Our members have a wide range of interests. For example, we have 566 members interested in computer-based patient records. If you need collaborators on your project, let us know all about it so we can spread the word.

New DIOC BLOG
The DIOC has created a Blog on data, computing and technology in dentistry. The first blog entry explains what the blog is about, and is looking for topics from DIOC members. Here is your chance ;-). We plan to post on the blog about 2-3 times a month.

Let's talk about Electronic Health Records, improving the DIOC, and more
We have recently created two new forum topics. The first is entitled "Your suggestions for improvement for the DIOC". We invite you to post what you think should be improved on the DIOC, as well as the areas or features that frustrate or disappoint you the most. We hope to use your suggestions to continue to improve the DIOC.

The second new discussion pertains to Electronic Health Records (EHR). We invite you and your colleagues to post your comments and feedback on your experiences with your EHR in this forum. The objective of this forum is to foster an open communication on the use of EHR in dental school settings and elsewhere, and collectively resolve and/or find solutions to issues related to using EHRs in clinical settings.

We also have forums on several other topics including digital imaging software, technical issues, compatibility issues, funding opportunities and more. Please feel free to post anything that is relevant to you. Other DIOC members would love to hear about your experiences, questions and comments.

If you think you'd be interested in any of the forums, please use these instructions to "follow a topic." Doing so will generate an email notification to you when someone posts a new message or reply. To follow a topic, first login to the DIOC community. Go to the forum and click on the discussion you are interested in. Next, you can click on a subject of that discussion to read the posts. Scroll down to the bottom of the last post, and in the footer of the discussion click the "follow topic" link. Finally, click "submit" and you will receive email notifications when someone posts a new message or reply to that subject. You can follow as many topics as you like.

Learn more about DIOC members
Did you know the DIOC has over 1,200 members from 72 different countries? Do you want to know more about them? Our members are dentists, faculty, students, librarians, and others with many different DI interests. Please visit our new page of site statistics. We enjoy knowing about the members of our community and we hope you do too.

All the best! Please keep in touch - we would love to hear from you.

Jeannie Irwin, Heiko Spallek and Titus Schleyer

-- Dental Informatics Online Community: http://www.dentalinformatics.org/
-- The Virtual, Global Community for Anyone Interested in Dental Informatics --

Monograph "The Computer-based Oral Health Record: A New Foundation for Oral Health Information Systems" available: Funded by the precursor organization to Oral Health America, the publication was one of the first to define functions and features of electronic dental records comprehensively (1993; PDF; 269 pages).

Dental schools left out of HITECH? In October 2009, Dr. Thankam Thyvalikakath presented testimony on the meaningful use of electronic health record to the HHS Health IT Policy Committee. As presently defined, “meaningful use” does not take many of the requirements specific to dentistry into account.

Chinese FAQ?: In addition to Spanish and English, DIOC’s Learning Center is now available in Chinese. With 37% of our members from countries other than the US, DIOC offers key content in multiple languages. Missing a language? Please volunteer to help us translate!

Heather K. Hill and Miguel Humberto Torres-Urquidy elected co-chairs of AMIA’s Dental Informatics Working Group (DI-WG): Last November, the members of AMIA’s DI-WG elected new leaders. In their new role, Heather and Humberto plan to strengthen DI-WG by fostering collaboration among members and encouraging participation in many of AMIA’s activities.

Dollars for DIOC? The funding by the National Library of Medicine for DIOC has ended, and we are looking for funding ideas for DIOC. We would like to grow and enhance DIOC in order to make it as useful as possible to the community. If you have an idea or can help us, please contact Heiko Spallek.

Weekly drawing for a free T-Shirt continues: By tagging papers in our Publication Archive you will be entered into a weekly drawing for a free DIOC T-shirt. Not only could you win a great piece of fashion, would would also help spread the word about DIOC. Keep tagging!

Dr. Titus Schleyer inducted into the American College of Medical Informatics (ACMI): As of November 2009, Dr. Schleyer is the fourth dental member of ACMI and the first one elected in 19 years. ACMI fellowship is granted as recognition to personal contributions of fellows to the development of the field.

The International Medical Informatics Association will hold its next Congress in Cape Town, South Africa from September 12 to 15. During the meeting several dental informatics experts will gather for their working group meeting. For more information, please visithttp://www.imia-dental.org.

Finally, AADR organizes meeting for dental informatics: The AADR graciously arranged an informal meeting on dental informatics for Friday, March 5th, 4 pm – 5:30 pm at the Washington DC Convention Center, Room 102A. The meeting is intended as an open forum for members of the research community to discuss opportunities for and challenges to dental informatics research, especially in light of the recent focus on health information technology.

Thanks for being a member! DIOC is heading towards its 1000th member - thanks to you and many others who have supported it over the years. Let us know if you have any ideas for how to celebrate this upcoming milestone!

All the best!

Humberto, Heiko and Titus