This is to ensure that dental records cannot be lost -- a problem that has plagued the quest for the identities of victims of last year's tsunami, leaving 600 unidentified. More than half of the area's dental offices and dental divisions in general hospitals were destroyed by the tsunami.
The team members, from the area hardest hit by the disaster, outlined their proposal in a poster presentation this week at the American Medical Informatics Association 2012 annual meeting in Chicago.
"We still have more than 600 dead bodies of which the identities had not been determined as of March 2012. The heavy damage suffered by the dead bodies make it difficult to identify them," noted lead author Shin Kasahara, DDS, PhD. "Furthermore, dental records are not available because a majority of the antemortem dental record data were lost in the tsunami."
Dr. Kasahara and his colleagues are starting to push for a switch to fully digital dental records and cloud computing, if several technological and funding barriers can be overcome. for complete story see here
