The American Dental Association recently made recommendations to federal officials in support of interoperability for dental imaging.
The ADA submitted comments March 11 to the HHS Department and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology in response to a request for information on ways to improve diagnostic imaging interoperability and the use of diagnostic images across healthcare systems.
The ADA noted several challenges with dental diagnostic imaging, including reliance on proprietary formats, inconsistent standard implementation, fragmented exchange pathways and the absence of consistent metadata and structured findings.
Among its recommendations, the ADA suggested policymakers use dental-specific guidance developed through its standards program to support interoperability. It also recommended establishing dental-specific certification criteria within the ONC’s Health IT Certification Program and expanding the U.S. Core Data for Interoperability to include dental imaging data classes.
