Technology Focus: This free app does periodontal staging, grading

Technology Focus is a DrBicuspid.com video series that brings you an up-close look at new technologies and tools in dentistry. This episode features the new MyPerioHealth app from OraPharma.

OraPharma's new -- and free -- MyPerioHealth app takes the guesswork out of periodontal staging and grading. Dr. Richard Nagelberg showed off the app, which follows the American Academy of Periodontology (AAP) guidelines, in the latest episode of Technology Focus.

The app features an easy-to-follow workflow that helps patients input their own risk factors and clinical parameters. The decision to make it patient-focusing was very intentional, said Nagelberg, a practicing general dentist and director of medical affairs of OraPharma.

"By the patient participating in the process, their ownership of their own disease is enhanced and their understanding of their own disease is enhanced, which should increase case acceptance because they participated in the process," he said.

The MyPerioHealth app.

Although patients answer the questions, the app is just as much for dental professionals as patients. It streamlines the process of gathering the data needed to perform an AAP staging and grading assessment, then automatically outputs a patient's exact periodontitis stage and grade.

"It became very apparent when the AAP came out with its staging and grading guidelines that it was a very challenging thing to accomplish -- to put that data in the right place and then to put that data together and arrive at the proper stage and grade," Nagelberg said. "If more practices are using the staging and grading, then more patients could benefit, and it's all about the patient."

See the MyPerioHealth app in action in the video below. You can also try it for yourself from the MyPerioHealth website.