This book informs readers of the needs and rationale for the integration of medical and dental care and information with an international perspective as to how and where medical and dental care separated into specific domains. It provide high level guidance on issues involved with care and data integration and how to achieve an integrated model of health care supported by integrated HIT. A patient typically expects that a visit to a dentist can usually be resolved immediately. This expectation places a premium on instant, accurate, thorough, and current information. The state-of-the-art of fully integrated (dental-medical) electronic health record (EHR) is covered and this is contrasted with the current state of dental-medical software. While dentists in the US Veterans Health Administration (VHA), the US Indian Health Service (IHS), or the US military, for example, have access to fully integrated health records, most US clinicians still gather information from separate sources via fax or phone calls. The authors provide an in-depth discussion of the role of informatics and information science in the articulation of medical and dental practices and clinical data with the focus on applied clinical informatics to improve quality of care, practice efficiency, coordination and continuity of care, communication between physicians and dentists and to provide a more comprehensive care for the patients. Lastly, the book examines advances in medical and dental research and how these may affect dentistry in the future. Most new advances in healthcare research are information-intensive.

The impact of information technology in the field of military decision making is superficially less visible than that of a number of other weapon developments, though its importance has grown steadily since the beginning of the 1980s. Owing to its potential role in modern weapon systems and the prospect of its inclusion as an essential ingredient in many military projects such as the Strategic Defence Initiative, it has become the focus of special interest and efforts. This book is the first attempt to present a broad overview of the prospects for information technology in general, and machine intelligence in particular, in the context of international security. The dangers and promises of weapon and arms control applications of computers and artificial intelligence to decision-making processes are analysed in a technical, strategic, and political perspective by experts from six different countries. In an introductory chapter, Allan Din presents a generic overview of artificial intelligence and its prospects. Thirteen contributors then discuss the conceptual and technical framework of artificial intelligence, analyse implications for weapon systems and strategy, and discuss possible applications to arms control verification and modelling.