Efficacy of a Self-Designed Mobile Application to Improve Child Dental Health Knowledge among Parents

OBJECTIVES: The objective of the study is to develop a mobile-based application and assess its efficacy in improving child dental health knowledge of parents. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: A mobile-based application (Your child's smile) was developed and made available on application-store and play store. This application provided all essential information to parents on child dental health prepartum and from infancy to adolescence. To assess improvement in parent's knowledge two similar pretested questionnaires were incorporated within the application, one to be filled at initial registration and other after the parents had utilized the application. Responses were entered into MS excel sheet and analyzed using IBM SPSS statistics version 20.0. RESULTS: Within the 15 days’ research period, the application was downloaded by 230 parents out of whom 110 answered only the 1(st) and 120 both questionnaires. Out of the 120 who responded to both majority showed highly significant (P < 0.01) or significant (P < 0.05) improvement in their knowledge on tooth development, importance of deciduous teeth, importance of regular dental check-up, pit and fissure sealants, bedtime bottle use, and consequence of early loss of deciduous teeth. Confidence in child dental health knowledge was also evident in other areas with more parents opting for agreeing, strongly agree, or disagree options. A majority 75% of parents favored the use of mobile applications as an effective child dental health knowledge tool. CONCLUSION: Within the limitations of the study, we can conclude that mobile based applications are an effective tool for providing child oral health knowledge to parents and significant improvement in knowledge is evident after parents utilized the mobile-based application.