MySmileBuddy

Partner(s): Dr. Burton Edelstein College of Dental Medicine Released: April 2011 Archived, no longer available.

MySmileBuddy is a mobile application to guide health workers assessing a child's risk for early childhood caries (ECC or severe tooth decay) and counseling that child's family on preventative lifestyle changes. CCNMTL is partnering with Dr. Burton Edelstein of the College of Dental Medicine to propose an improved risk assessment for ECC, and to develop and test the MySmileBuddy tool. Dr. Edelstein will conduct a pilot of MySmileBuddy funded by the National Institute of Health (NIH) with at-risk families in Morningside Heights.

Health workers and families using MySmileBuddy will supplement their face-to-face interaction with the use of MySmileBuddy's mobile application on a tablet computer that calculates risk for ECC and assists health workers in providing educational and motivational activities about oral health. The mobile application features assessment questions, interactive day/diet planner, videos and animation, as well as researcher tools including an online equation weighting tool for developing appropriate risk scores and an administrative area for viewing family data.

MySmileBuddy represents a novel approach to improving dental health through emphasizing prevention rather than repair, exploring ways to move dental education and care into a community health worker context, and helping dentists learn to deliver counseling messages about behavior change.

The MySmileBuddy is a Triangle Initiative project.

Related project categories:
Custom Software Applications and Tools | Medicine and Health