Speakers Day 2: International Oral Health Symposium 2022

Dr. Karin Garming Legert

The new dental curriculum at Karolinska Institutet and experiences of adaptation to Covid-19

To meet the challenges of the rapid technological advancements and changing patient perspectives in dentistry, a new curriculum has been developed at the KI dental program. The new curriculum is comprised of three parallel themes; Knowledge and clinical competence, Scientific development, and Professional development, which run throughout the program. In particular, the program focuses on ensuring that future general dentists acquire knowledge and competence to care for patients with medical diseases that undergo increasingly advanced medical treatments, and that elderly individuals retaining their own teeth remaining are treated appropriately. Unfortunately, implementation of the new dental curriculum coincided with the ongoing pandemic. Efforts were made to ensure continuous education with realization of the new curriculum, accomplish good examination results, build and maintain student interactions and well-being, and to support the existing older students so that graduation occurred in due time without increasing the spread of Covid-19.

About Dr. Karin Garming Legert

After completing the study program in nursing (1987) and the study program in dentistry (1993), I worked as a hospital dentist and clinical teacher at Karolinska Institutet with special interest in oral medicine. In 2019 I became a specialist in orofacial medicine. I undertook my PhD education at Karolinska Institutet and defended my thesis in 2011. The title was "Conditioning associated effects on oral mucosa and salivary secretion in allogeneic stem cell recipients", supervised by Professor Göran Dahllöf, Professor Anders Heimdahl and Professor Olle Ringdén. Since around 2000, I have been a lecturer at the Department of Dental Medicine and have since 2012 focused on oral medicine and clinical oral pathology education of dental, dental hygienist and continuing professional education dentists. In 2015, I was appointed as Program Director for the study programs in Dentistry and the Complementary Program for Dentists outside EU/EES and Switzerland. I have since then been chair for the working group for a new curriculum and by that heavily involved in the development and implementation of the new dental program study plan. Alongside my teaching and mentoring activities for the undergraduate education, I am supervisor for several students in the dental Specialist Training Program, as well as supervisor for PhD candidates.  

Dr. Leanne Teoh

Drugs4dent and education to improve dental antibiotic prescribing: a pilot intervention study

Aims: Antibiotic resistance is a global public health problem. However, 55% of dental antibiotic prescribing is inappropriate. The aim of this multimodal interventional study was to assess the effect of a dental-specific prescribing tool, Drugs4dent, and targeted education, on prescribing.

Method: Twenty-six dentists were recruited for the 12-week pre-post study. Dentists self-recorded their antibiotic prescribing for 6 weeks, after which they were provided education and access to Drugs4dent. Their prescribing was then recorded for a further 6 weeks. The number of antibiotics, and number of inappropriate indications for which antibiotics were prescribed, were measured before and after the intervention.

Results: There was a 41% reduction in the number of antibiotics, and 45% reduction in the number of inappropriate indications for which antibiotics were prescribed.

Conclusion: This pilot study showed the intervention of targeted education and Drugs4dent were effective in improving dental antibiotic prescribing, providing an effective antibiotic stewardship tool.

About Dr. Leanne Teoh

Dr Leanne Teoh is a dentist and pharmacist, lecturer of dental therapeutics and an early career postdoctoral researcher at the Melbourne Dental School, University of Melbourne. Her research focus is on various aspects of medicine use in dentistry and dental prescribing practices. She is a co-inventor of the digital prescribing tool, Drugs4dent, that provides practitioners with dentally-relevant medicines information, patient education about the use of antibiotics, and assists dentists with appropriate prescribing. She co-authored the Australian national dental guidelines, Therapeutic Guidelines Oral and Dental Version 2, is on the editorial board for the journal BMC Oral Health, and is part of the Australian Dental Association Therapeutics Committee. She is a lecturer and coordinator for the dental therapeutics program for the Doctor of Dental Surgery and Bachelor of Oral Hygiene courses at the University of Melbourne. Leanne has received several awards and scholarships, including the Rowden White Scholarship, International College of Dentists Community Oral Health Award for 2018, and the Ernest Joske Award in 2020 at Melbourne Dental School for research impact and publications. She is a founding member of the Global Antimicrobial Resistance Dental Network for the FDI World Dental Federation. 

Dr. Xuan Li

A glutathione-responsive silica-based nanosystem for precisely modulating immuno-inflammatory responses

Precise modulation of immuno-inflammatory responses is crucial to control periodontal disease and its systemic comorbidities for oral and general health. Herein, we utilized a facile approach to perform the in-situ polymerization and constructed a novel red-emissive mesoporous silica nanoparticle (MSN)-based nanosystem, featuring cell-penetrating poly(disulfide) (CPD) coating with intracellular glutathione-responsive controlled-release manner and instant cellular internalization capacity for precisely delivering baicalein (BE). The underlying mechanisms of nano-encapsulated BE-induced modulatory effects on immuno-inflammatory responses were investigated in human gingival epithelial cells. The in-situ polymerized CPD layer could cap the porous periphery of MSNs and control the release of the encapsulated BE in a glutathione-responsive manner. The nanosystem and intracellularly released BE could effectively downregulate the expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines, through inhibiting the NF-kB signaling pathway. This study highlights that the CPD-capped MSNs may serve as a novel multi-functional nanosystem to precisely modulate immuno-inflammatory responses via targeting the NF-kB pathway for better healthcare.

About Dr. Xuan Li

Dr. Li is currently a full-time postdoctoral fellow working on the nanomedicines for oral/periodontal care at the Faculty of Dentistry, The University of Hong Kong (HKU). She had her PhD study on developing mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs)-based nanoencapsulation system for oral healthcare, and received the PhD degree in 2017 at the Faculty of Dentistry, HKU. Then, she obtained the Faculty Research Output Prize as the co-recipient in 2018. Her present research work is about i) developing novel nanomedicines with controlled drug releasing manner for antimicrobial, anti-inflammation and the modulation of host-microbe interactions; and ii) constructing biomedical materials/devices for theranostic applications. With a highly diverse education and multidisciplinary research background, she has accumulated extensive experience in the areas of pharmacy, herbal medicines, nanotechnology, oral microbiology and biosciences, and then become the Member of Royal Society of Chemistry (MRSC). Moreover, she has recently been awarded the Researcher Development Grants from Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) and the Health and Medical Research Fund (HMRF) from Hong Kong Government in 2020.

Dr. Liu Yuchun

CannuSlide, a Novel High Volume Evacuator for Capturing Aerosols & Splatters During Aerosol-Generating Procedures

Dental professionals are at one of the highest risk of COVID19-infection due to their exposure to aerosols and close proximity to patients. High-volume evacuators (HVE) are the gold standard solution, but remain inadequate in removing aerosol splatters particularly at the anterior regions. We propose the development of CannuSlide, a 2-in-1 cannula designed with a large shield for aerosols management whilst allowing intraoral access. Several prototypes were designed, 3D-printed and tested for its suction efficacy using the dental chair’s vacuum suction system; Computational simulations were used to optimize the design; Usability feedback was obtained from dental assistants. Simulation results validated our experimental observations - CannuSlide captured and removed more aerosols due to its large shield as compared to a commercial HVE cannula, hence improving safety for dental personnels. CannuSlide has undergone several iterations to improve its performance and ergonomics. A provisional patent application has been filed and the regulatory dossier is being prepared.

About Dr. Liu Yuchun

Dr Liu Yuchun is a bioengineer by training and graduated with a specialization in Tissue Engineering. She was also trained in the area of biodesign innovation, design thinking, entrepreneurship, regulatory and patent work, which all served to be very useful in her current medtech innovation work. As a Junior Principal Investigator in the National Dental Centre Singapore, Dr Liu hopes to create impactful value-driven dental medtech innovations that can bring about better quality of life to patients, or improve clinical efficiency and safety within the clinical setting. She enjoys performing clinical needs discovery, doing the ground-work to understand people’s needs and challenges, and seeing how these different perspectives shape the way the innovation will eventually be designed. She finds great joy in getting her hands dirty during prototype design and engineering, and is a firm believer that “there is no failure, only feedback”. She had worked on a variety of medtech projects, ranging from rehabilitation devices, surgical tools in ophthalmology to implantables in dentistry. For the current project, Dr Liu will present a novel design for a high volume evacuator. Her key partners are the dental assistants and a multidisciplinary team of industry partners.

Dr. Jacob Holmer

Severe tooth loss and incident dementia in a Swedish population-based cohort

Results from one of our recent studies will be presented. We aimed to determine if severe tooth loss was associated with incident dementia. We used a population-based cohort study design with data from the vast health registries in Sweden. The study population comprised 281,586 participants, including 19,927 with severe tooth loss (STL) and 261,659 without STL (non-STL). The cohort was followed for up to 8.8 years. During the observation period, 6.2% of the STL group and 3.3% of the reference group developed dementia. Compared to the non-STL group, the STL group had a higher hazard for all-cause dementia, and the confounder-adjusted hazard ratio was 1.16 (95% confidence interval = 1.09 to 1.23). These findings suggested that severe tooth loss, a surrogate marker of dental disease experience, was associated with incident dementia. Thus, severe tooth loss may be considered a risk marker for dementia.

About Dr. Jacob Holmer

Dr Holmer is a dentist and recently completed his doctoral studies on periodontal disease and dementia. The main research interest is in epidemiology, particularly registry-based research, to study oral-systemic disease interactions. Dr Holmer is currently a resident in periodontology at the Specialist Clinic in Karolinska Institutet. 

Dr James Tsoi

Smart biomimetic design of dental crown with 3D-DCGAN

Crown design has been a human-centred work for years, even with the aid of CAD/CAM. In fact, the commercial CAD with so-called knowledge-based Artificial Intelligence (AI) cannot design a better crown than dental technician. Recently, we have developed a new machine learning method (namely 3D-DCGAN) that can design a dental crown morphologically best match with the human natural tooth. In addition, by matching with a proper material, the 3D-DCGAN designed crown can even match biomechanically with the natural one in silico. Thus, 3D-DCGAN method can be promising in automating the biomimetic crown design.    

About Dr James Tsoi

Dr James Tsoi is an Associate Professor in Dental Materials Science and Assistant Dean (Innovation) at HKU Faculty of Dentistry. Trained as a chemist, James has research foci in dental materials science, digital dentistry, smart manufacturing and Artificial Intelligence (AI). He holds the Fellow of Advanced HE (FHEA), and Members of Royal Society of Chemistry (MRSC) and British Computer of Society (MBCS). He has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed SCI journal articles, 2 book chapters, filed 6 patents, and awarded 8+ times in IADR conferences and recently in Invention Geneva 2022. He serves as member of the various journals' editorial boards.

Dr. Yu Na

Automation and Digital Workflow: The Key to Unlock Denture Service in Aging Population

With an ageing population and growing demand for denture treatments, the conventional denture manufacturing method is incapable of meeting the current demand in Singapore due to its labour intensity and low efficiency. Such a growing demand urgently necessitates simplification and automation in denture manufacturing. Clinicians and innovators in National Dental Singapore have deployed and developed novel CAD-CAM solutions to improve the clinical efficacy and efficiency for partial and complete dental prostheses. This lecture will provide you an overview of the current state of art and challenges in analogue and digital workflows. A live demonstration of an innovative, automated digital workflow will be presented, and the comparison of healthcare quality and cost-effective analysis will be illustrated in this lecture.

About Dr. Yu Na

Dr Yu Na is a Senior Dental Surgeon at the National Dental Centre Singapore (NDCS) and Assistant Professor at the DUKE-NUS Medical School. Trained as a dentist and prosthodontist, she subsequently obtained her PhD in Medical Science at Faculty of Dentistry from Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands. She is the first dentist in Singapore to have obtained the Clinician-Scientist Award from the National Medical Research Council (NMRC). As director and theme lead of MedTech research for oral-health Academic Clinical Programme, much of her research work is focused on innovative workflows for digital dentistry, including digital processing, 3D printing of dental appliances, novel biomaterials and regenerative dentistry.

Professor Reinhilde Jacobs

The art of artificial scanning and planning

Digital dentistry goes hand in hand with dental imaging. During the last decade, 3D imaging has started to play a dominant role in daily practice, not only in relation to radiologic diagnosis, yet and surely also in relation to treatment planning. These changes may create a need to redefine the role and organisation of the  dental team. Digital 3D imaging may even revolutionize oral healthcare by the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) and its great  potential for education, diagnosis and treatment planning.  Can AI-based diagnosis and treatment planning make the digital workflow more efficient and accurate with a better prediction of treatment outcome? Whatsoever it will help clinicians to reshape the future of dentistry.

About Professor Reinhilde Jacobs

Reinhilde Jacobs is dentist, Doctor in Dental Sciences (PhD University of Leuven), periodontologist (KU Leuven) and Master in Dental Radiology (University of London). She is full professor at the University of Leuven and visiting professor at Karolinksa Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden and the Dalian Medical University in China. R. Jacobs is heading the omfs impath research group of the KU Leuven (omfsimpath.be) and the clinical center of dentomaxillofacial radiology (UZleuven). She is Secretary General of the International Association of DentoMaxilloFacial Radiology. She is section editor of 4 journals (Clinical Oral Investigations, International Journal of Oral Implantology, European Journal of Radiology and Oral Radiology). She has received the D Collen Research Travel Award (1994), a postdoctoral fellowship of the European Commission (1994-95), the IADR Young Investigators Award (1998) and the Belgian Joachim Award in Odontostomatology (1999). In 2013, she received a Dr Honoris Causa at the "Iuliu Hatieganu" University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Cluj-Napoca. She is involved in many multidisciplinary and interuniversity research collaborations, with a specific focus on imaging research, artificial intelligence and bioprinting. She has been actively participating in 5 European projects and is (co-)author of 7 books and more than 540 publications in peer-reviewed journals besides multiple invited lectures and publications in other journals or books. Scopus (2022): h:71

Dr Mihiri Silva

Can learning health systems improve dental health?

Digital health offers exciting opportunities to develop innovative approaches to transforming clinical and population health. Most people are aware of the role of data and digital technology in their lives yet these remains underutilised in oral health. From learning health systems to diagnostics and social media, this presentation will provide examples of digital health applications to improve oral health.

About Dr Mihiri Silva

Dr Mihiri Silva is the Divisional Lead of Population Health, Cariology and Oral Health and a Senior Lecturer in Paediatric Dentistry at the Melbourne Dental School, University of Melbourne. Mihiri is also Clinician-Scientist Fellow at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute and Consultant Paediatric Dentist and the Research Lead at the Department of Dentistry, Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne. Mihiri's research ranges from data analytics to causal inference and qualitative research. A major focus of her work has been the use of large longitudinal datasets, from cohort studies and clinical records to understand drivers of poor oral health in children and develop innovative evidence-based population and clinical interventions to address these. Mihiri is an Associate Editor for the International Journal of Paediatric Dentistry and the European Archives of Paediatric Dentistry, and reviews for number of other leading journals and conferences. She is the current deputy chair of the Australian Dental Association Federal Oral Health Committee, President of the Australian New Zealand Society for Paediatric Dentistry Victorian Branch and Secretary of the Paediatric Oral Health Research Group of the International Association of Dental Research. 

Professor Georgios Belibasakis

Emerging challenges in utilizing the oral microbiome in personalized dentistry

Advances in fundamental dental research over the past century have allowed us to drastically deepen and refine our understanding of the mechanisms underlying common oral diseases, whereas technological advancements have provided us with new highways of exploration. Despite the great progress, large gaps still exist in the implementation of this information in the clinical reality. Using the oral microbiome as a paradigm, this presentation will highlight the challenges that stand along the way of utilizing this resource routinely in personalized dentistry.

About Professor Georgios Belibasakis

Georgios Belibasakis is Professor of Clinical Oral Infection Biology at Karolinska Institutet. He is also Head of the Division of Oral Diseases, and Head of Research at the Department of Dental Medicine. He holds a DDS degree, an MSc in Periodontology, a PhD in Oral Microbiology and a Venia Legendi (Docentur) in Oral Microbiology and Immunology. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA) and the Group Program Chair of the Periodontal Research Group of the International Association for Dental Research (IADR). He is also Specialty Chief Editor for Frontiers in Oral Health, Associate Editor for Archives of Oral Biology and Editorial Board member of several Journals.

Professor Colman McGrath

Successful Ageing & Oral Health                                                             

Our world is ageing and is ageing fast. In 2020 there were more than a billion people aged 60 and older, and many of them are living in China & South East Asia. In response to the aging population, The United Nations General Assembly declared 2021–2030 the’ Decade of Healthy Ageing’ in December 2020 with World Health Organisation was asked to lead on its implementation. In this presentation we will review the dimensions and domains of oral health associated with active aging. The association between oral health and mortality – all cause mortality and disease-specific mortality. The impact of oral health on diet and nutrition – the specific oral health factors and methods for assessing nutritional status, as well as the evidence of the benefits of oral rehabilitation for improvement of nutritional status among those malnourished/ or ‘at risk’. There has been considerable research into how oral health contributes to ‘frailty’ and vice-versa, and much interest in ‘oral frailty’, how it develops and how to assess it. There has been a growing interest in the relationship between oral health and cognitive decline, the potential mechanisms at play, and much debate about the implications of this for geriatric care. There is limited evidence of how social networks and social capital affects older people’s oral health.  Specific examples from local studies will be provided with a wealth of evidence from the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Study.  

About Professor Colman McGrath

Colman is a Clinical Professor in Dental Public Health at the Faculty of Dentistry, the University of Hong Kong.  His research interest is in Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMS) and he has published over 250 papers in ISI journals and has a h-index of over 65. He has conducted numerous population-wide epidemiological surveys and more than 20 clinical trials with a specific focus of ‘PROMs’ as an outcome measure. He is passionate about ‘teaching & learning’ and is an advocate of Problem Based Learning (PBL). He editor of the book ‘Problem-Based Learning in in Clinical Education (Springer, 2008)’ and contributes regularly to the scholarship of teaching & learning.  His clinical interest is in the management of people with physical, medical, intellectual, mental, emotional and social impairments.  He has been working with medical compromised patients (stroke survivors in conjunction with the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals); social excluded groups (homeless, refugees, and people with addictions, in conjunction with various NGOs), and those with developmental disorders (Autism Spectrum Disorders and Cerebral Palsy) in Hong Kong for almost 20 years. Colman is past president of the BEHSR group of the IADR and has served on numerous national, regional and international committees.  He serves on the editorial board of Clinical Oral Implants Research and the Journal of Disability & Oral Health.  He currently serves on the scientific committee of the International Association of Disability & Health (iADH).  

Dr. Juha Song 

Development of a robot-assisted dental care system: Building fundamentals for autonomous toothbrushing with in vitro dental models

Dental hygiene contributes an important aspect to one’s overall health and well-being. However, self-cleansing oral hygiene practices such as brushing, and flossing are often insufficient in maintaining oral health. Especially for patients suffering from low manual dexterity, decreased capabilities to conduct efficient toothbrushing for effective plaque removal have been observed since toothbrushing requires the use of a range of motor skills. Hence, there is a need to develop a dental brushing robotic system that automatically performs the toothbrushing task. To aid this invention, it is necessary to develop an accurate and representative dental model that reflects variations in dental structure, analyze the morphological differences between an ideal and defective dental model, and produce an artificial dental plaque model. Herein, recent advances on the 3D printed dental models will be presented, together with the development of a brushing robot system.

About Dr. Juha Song

Dr. Juha Song is an Associate Professor, in the School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), an active member of the Singapore Centre for 3D Printing (SC3DP) and the school representative for robotics research center (RRC). She has obtained her PhD in Materials Science and Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in 2011 with research focus on bioimimetics and biomechanics for an understanding of material design principles of natural exoskeleton systems. She did her post-doctoral training at Advanced Institute of Convergence Technology, Seoul National University, where she conducted research on development of hybrid biomaterials for dental, orthopedic, cardiovascular and soft tissue implants, actively working with local biomedical companies. During 2014-2015, she was also a contract professor at Korea University, School of Biomedical Engineering. Her lab’s research interests focus on experimental and theoretical investigations of natural and synthetic composite materials across all length scales, particularly in the field of biomimetic and bioinspired engineering, as well as biomedical engineering, covering various topics on nanomechanics, biomechanics, biomimetic design, 3D fabrication and prototyping, biomedical material design, synthesis and evaluation.