£5m investment in Portsmouth University Dental Academy
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00:00 So that is the opportunity that we've been waiting for a long time to get these new facilities
00:06 open to start with the research but also to highlight what we've been doing over the years
00:11 and also it's going to help us to improve and to enhance our educational provision as
00:16 you can see with the new facilities that we have now.
00:19 Perfect, so could you, your title, you're AOV expertise in terms of public health and
00:25 the facilities here, how do you think that will roll over in terms of ports within the
00:28 community and public health in general?
00:33 Well the dental academy has a huge civic commitment so we've been working with community outreach
00:40 and community and underserved communities for many years now.
00:45 So this new setting that we have now is aiming to improve what we are delivering currently
00:52 to the community.
00:53 For example we are working with local schools over the last 12 years we are delivering a
00:58 toothbrush supervised toothbrushing scheme to the community so we work with local schools,
01:05 students are delivering toothbrushes and toothpaste to children, doing dental screening and also
01:12 providing fluoride varnish and dental health education to the teachers.
01:17 But now with this new digital dentistry we are including also intraoral cameras to the
01:22 programme so students are taking pictures of these children's mouth to make the screening
01:27 more accurate.
01:29 So basically we don't need a dentist to be on site by the day of the screening when our
01:34 students are out there but when the pictures are coming to the academy then they can make
01:39 the screening more efficiently and that increase the detection in about 50%.
01:46 So we are very happy with that and we are using this new lab as well to make this possible.
01:53 In terms of your future research, do you want to open up more possibilities for you and
02:00 for the university?
02:01 Yeah, of course.
02:02 First of all with the improvement in the students' training of course we are aiming to increase
02:12 the capacity of dental care provision that is also related to research.
02:19 We are very low in numbers in terms of NHS dentistry which is in crisis currently.
02:24 So anything that we can do to improve dental care provision is going to help us.
02:27 If the students are training better then our care provision is going to improve as well.
02:33 And of course with the dental lab we are aiming to test new and more modern ways of giving
02:40 the patients better access to dental health.
02:43 For example with new materials to make prosthesis or in sports dentistry we can make sports
02:51 cards and we can use all these facilities to make this possible.
02:56 How has the feedback been with students?
02:58 It's been very positive, they are very excited I think.
03:01 It's new for all of us, we are also learning but they are very much tech-savvy than us
03:08 so it's going to be a very, very exciting process for now with the students.
03:14 We are very fortunate in having £5 million funding from the University of Portsmouth
03:22 and also £600,000 funding from NHS England to really upgrade our clinical facilities
03:30 and introduce a whole range of digital dentistry related equipment.
03:36 So that includes the haptic simulation equipment that we have here, those eight units will
03:43 allow our students to simulate working with patients in advance of them treating their
03:50 real patients.
03:52 We also have a digital dentistry set up which really will allow and expose our students
03:58 to the whole new area of digital dentistry which includes intra-oral scanning of patients
04:05 mouths instead of taking the traditional moulds and impressions all the way up to milling
04:12 items of treatment such as a crown for a patient or 3D printing for example a soft bite guard
04:21 or a sports card.
04:24 And are there any other universities or facilities that have this kind of technology at the moment
04:28 in the UK?
04:29 I think it's fair to say that not every dental school in the UK will have this sort of equipment.
04:36 We're I think one of a relatively small number that do have a digital dentistry set up as
04:44 well as a haptic simulation set up.
04:46 And are you seeing an upturn in student interest from that?
04:51 Student interest has been phenomenal.
04:54 We've only just acquired the equipment and so our first year students have just been
04:59 introduced to it and we're absolutely determined to make sure it's a fundamental part of the
05:05 curriculum so their feedback has been extremely positive.
05:09 But we've also had really positive feedback on our open days when we invite parents and
05:14 prospective students to come to the Dental Academy on these open days and they have been
05:21 impressed as well.
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