Denplan has launched a new upgraded version of The Denplan PreViser Patient Assessment (DEPPA) tool. DEPPA provides an instantaneous online report showing a patient’s Oral Health Score, alongside giving an evidence-based assessment of a patient's risk of future diseases such as dental caries, periodontal disease, tooth wear and oral cancer.
DEPPA first launched its innovative patient assessment tool in May 2013, marking a pivotal moment in clinical risk assessment, supporting effective communication and truly placing patients and their future oral health at the very centre of effective and preventive care.
Denplan has launched an enhanced version of DEPPA, following valued and valuable input from its Excel dentists. Denplan Excel is an advanced quality assurance programme, developed for dentists to help support clinical governance, professional regulation and excellence in patient care and communication. The upgraded version of DEPPA will contain three substantial benefits:
- Firstly, patient data and reports will be stored securely within the DEPPA system. This means that whilst it is still best practice to save reports to the practice’s management software/clinical records, they can simply be accessed at any time from the DEPPA home page.
- Secondly, for a patient who has had a previous DEPPA assessment, this can be linked to the current one. A new third page will appear on these follow up assessments which shows the results of up to two previous assessments, thus increasing patient’s understanding of how their oral health and future risk is changing.
- And thirdly, the practice analysis reporting has been enhanced. This enables practices to audit their patients in depth, over any period of their choosing and at anytime.
Commenting on the enhancements to DEPPA, Henry Clover, Deputy Chief Dental Officer at Denplan said: “We’re extremely proud of how popular the DEPPA tool has become since its launch over two and half years ago – over 50,000 patients have now benefitted from the evidence based tool, which is designed to help improve the patient experience and significantly improve their understanding of their oral health. It is also a valuable clinical decision support tool.
“We value the continued input from our member dentists, which enables DEPPA and our Excel programme as a whole to continue to develop. The upgrades to DEPPA have been trialled already and we are confident they are straightforward to implement and will significantly enhance the usability of the tool for dentists.”
DEPPA has received extremely positive feedback from both patients and dentists - 100% of dentists asked agreed that the DEPPA report is a ‘valuable patient communication aid’, while 95% agreed that comprehensive patient assessments, such as DEPPA, are becoming an essential aspect of quality dental care.*
Denplan has produced a simple guide to using the upgrade, for existing users of DEPPA, which is available alongside the main DEPPA manual. DEPPA remains free to all Excel dentists, whilst non-Excel Denplan members can benefit from unlimited use of the online system for just £90 per month (inc VAT). For more information about DEPPA or to sign up online, visit