Background: Growing evidence suggests that poor oral health is linked to a wide range of systemic conditions, including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, dementia, infections, and mental health problems. Oral diseases such as gum disease and dental caries not only affect the mouth but may also contribute to inflammation elsewhere in the body, potentially triggering autoimmune responses. While early dental treatment is widely encouraged, its broader health benefits remain unproven. This is partly because it is neither practical nor ethical to conduct long-term clinical trials comparing disease progression between treated and untreated dental patients.
Novelty & Importance: An innovative alternative is to harness NHS Electronic Health Records (EHR) and advanced analytical methods to evaluate the impact of dental care on wider health outcomes. However, dental and medical records are currently stored separately and are not routinely linked. This lack of integration is a major barrier to understanding how oral health interventions affect other diseases. To address this, our project will establish a pioneering framework for linking dental and medical records at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust (GSTT), creating one of the first integrated dental–medical datasets of its kind in the UK.
Aims & Objectives: This project aims to 1) Link dental and medical records to create a unified, secure database for research and clinical use; 2) Assess systemic disease burdens among people with oral conditions, focusing on diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and dementia; 3) Evaluate the effectiveness of dental treatment in preventing or slowing the progression of other diseases; and 4) Identify oral health inequalities and design targeted preventive strategies to reduce health disparities and disease burden across the NHS.
By integrating dental and medical data, this project will generate new evidence to inform preventive strategies and improve patient care at both individual and population levels.