Our analysis of dental networks and their relationship to oral dysplasia and socio-economic status is one example of how spatial decision support systems can be applied to the health sciences and epidemiology. In this case, visual communications of the spatial distributions of oral dysplasia biopsy reports, dentist offices, and socio-economic status can be used for the assessment and application of health care initiatives, health service legislation, and targeted educational programs for risk reduction.
The correlations between the VANDIX scores and Dental Office locations provided useful statistics with the OLS method, such as a p-value < 0.05, which denotes non-random, positive correlation between the two variables. Although this is a good indication that there is a relationship between Dental office locations and medium-high socio-economic status, it is difficult to determine how or why SES is related to oral biopsy counts. This is because OBS centres are not spatially representative of where patients live and therefore accurate correlations between individuals and their SES are difficult to determine.
The following section contains the references we used throughout our full research report.
