Needless to say, it has been a busy season for DO-Touch.NET.  We attended the AOA’s annual OMED conference in Las Vegas in September.  This led to several clinicians becoming new members of DO-Touch.NET following a well-attended presentation about the Network. 

We hosted our second DO-Touch.NET Annual Meeting in October, which gave several new Site Directors the opportunity to collaborate with other researchers and discuss recruitment techniques and challenges.  We were able to implement a new electronic data capture system that required many hours of manual updates and training sessions for both our sites and coordinating center.  We are happy to report that sites and participants have both been receptive to the new process and electronic participation has increased significantly.   We see this as a significant advancement in facilitating data collection throughout the network.

We will continue to stay busy as we prepare new grant applications, perform statistical analyses, and write publications.   We will also soon be assisting the University’s Missouri School of Dentistry and Oral Health to create their own PBRN and we are looking forward to future collaborations and possible research studies that would benefit both professions.