A Mobile App for Managing Mobile Medical Units Has Been Successfully Tested in Romania

Beginning of March 2019, Merci Charity Boutique association based in Bucharest, Romania started testing the "Mobile app for mobile medical units and cabinets", which helps the mobile dental practice to monitor the performance of the actions carried out in the rural communities. In the past six months, data from 772 children from rural communities were collected. The application was developed by Romanian company Tremend Software and funded by Vodafone Romania Foundation with a budget of 33,392 EUR.

The app helps the association’s team to monitor the performance of each action, calculating the ratio of diagnosed caries to treated caries, analyzing the types of interventions and their number, as well as the value of the prophylaxis and dental treatment intervention for each child. For example, for the 772 children monitored, the team performed oral prophylaxis interventions and treatment with a value of 164,743 EUR, with an average intervention value of 213 EUR/child. The data collected helps the team also to forecast the minimum budget necessary for the prophylaxis and the dental treatment for the population of children living in rural areas, respectively 234,707 EUR for approximately 1,100,000 children living in Romanian villages where only 13% of the total dental practices are offering services.

From the data collected from 772 children, 75,4% of them were visiting a dentist for the first time in their life. The number of simple and complicated diagnosed caries rose to 3,386, with an average of 4.38 caries/child, above the European average, which stands at 3.5 caries/child. The team treated 890 simple caries, representing 26% of the total identified, the rest needing more complex treatment. In addition to caries treatment, the team also performed 1,428 dental seals with an average of 1.85 dental seals/child.

By the end of 2020, the association will release a study on the oral health status of children living in rural areas, presenting statistically relevant data from the counties where the mobile dental practice carried out activities in the past two years.

About the mobile dental practice and the Merci Charity Boutique association

Merci Charity Association is a non-profit organization established in 2012 in Bucharest, Romania, with the purpose to help humanitarian causes through mobile health and education projects dedicated to children with medical and social problems in the foreground. The association owns two mobile dental offices and in the long term aims to create a network of mobile dental practices in Romania and to promote mobile medicine solutions. Recently, the association was awarded the Anthony Vavasis Innovation Award for innovation in mobile medicine, awarded by the Mobile Healthcare Association, USA.

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