Technological aspects of dental education: will we still be reading a paper journal in 50 years?

Abstract

Change has become the norm and with the digital revolution we are seeing the demise of the printed word. Dentistry is a pictorial subject, but will pictures in a textbook or journal be surpassed by accessing digital ones on a screen? This article reviews the rapidly changing access and reading of dental publications. An argument is that the ease of access to electronic material, such as video and podcasts, may make traditional paper-based publications obsolete. Already dentistry is seeing such changes take place. With such revolutions come challenges. Misinformation is much easier to generate, and the evidence base may be diluted. Furthermore artificial intelligence is now able to produce text and papers that will make it more difficult to critically review the dental content on offer. The future will bring many challenges and this article provides an opinion on what dentistry might expect. CPD/Clinical Relevance: There are challenges posed by the increasing use of digital resources for information and how this might impact dental knowledge.