Survey on knowledge, attitude, and practice of Indian oral health-care professionals regarding QR codes in dental practice and academics

Abstract

Objectives: QR codes form an integral part of modern-day digitalized information storage technology in almost all the fields. Their utility in oral health-care field also has a huge potential, most of which can be uncovered once the oral health-care professionals are aware about their uses and technique of generation. Materials and Methods: A self-constructed e-questionnaire was validated and circulated through online media to oral health-care professionals in India. Data were subjected to statistical analysis and descriptive statistics were obtained. Comparison of frequencies of categories of variables with groups was done using Chi-square test. Results: The study sample of n = 334 respondents comprised 222 females and 112 males. The age of respondents ranged from 22 to 65 years with a mean age of 28.96 years (S.D = ± 6.877). Majority of respondents were aware about the utility of QR codes in day-to-day aspects as well as dental clinical practice and academics. Although two-thirds of respondents perceived online data management as an easy task, generation of QR codes was considered as relatively more difficult requiring higher technical skills. Conclusion: QR codes can have a wide variety of applications in the field of dentistry such as in prosthodontics, orthodontics, oral pathology, radiology, and forensic odontology. Our findings suggest that most of the dental professionals have convenient access to the technology essential to generating QR code, and yet, about 70% of oral health-care professionals are unaware about their generation technique.