Insights from the global education survey on the use of VR-haptics in dental education

Sompop Bencharit¹Barry Francis Quinn²Maria Florencia Stittoni-Pino³Santiago Arias³Simona Schick⁴Sarah Rampf⁴Samantha Byrne⁵Muhammad A. Shazib¹Ulf Örtengren⁶Walter Y. H. Lam⁷Mikko Liukkonen⁸David P Rice⁹Masako Nagasawa¹⁰Amitha Ranauta¹¹Sobia Zafar¹²Kinga Bágyi¹³Thomas Greany¹⁴Amirul Faiz Luai¹⁵Marit Øilo¹⁶Gitana Rederiene¹⁷Rebecca Stolberg¹⁸Gülsün Gül¹⁸Jorge Tricio¹⁹Reinhard, Chun Wang Chau⁷Mihaela Pantea²⁰Murat Mutluay²¹Peter Karl Lingström⁶Ophir Klein^22,23Sila Nur Usta²⁴Anna Liisa Suominen⁸Szabolcs Felszeghy^21*

• ¹Workmann School of Dental Medicine, High Point University, High Point, North Carolina, United States
• ²School of Dentistry, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, North West England, United Kingdom
• ³Faculty of Health Sciences, Universidad Europea de Valencia, Valencia, Spain
• ⁴Clinic for Oral, Dental and Maxillofacial Diseases, Department of Conservative Dentistry, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
• ⁵Melbourne Dental School, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia
• ⁶Department of Cariology, Institute of Odontology, Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden
• ⁷Prosthodontics, Faculty of Dentistry, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong, SAR China
• ⁸Institute of Clinical Medicine, School of Medicine, University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio, Northern Savonia, Finland
• ⁹Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Diseases, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Uusimaa, Finland
• ¹⁰Faculty of Dentistry & Graduate School of Medical and Dental sciences, Division of Bio-Prosthodontics, Niigata University, Niigata, Niigata, Japan
• ¹¹Queen Mary University of London, London, United Kingdom
• ¹²School of Dentistry, The University of Queensland, Queensland, Australia
• ¹³Faculty of Dentistry, University of Debrecen, Debrecen, Hajdu-Bihar, Hungary
• ¹⁴University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, Aurora, United States
• ¹⁵Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Medical Center (UKMMC), Cheras, Malaysia
• ¹⁶Department of Clinical Dentistry,, University of Bergen, Bergen, Hordaland, Norway
• ¹⁷European Dental Hygienists Federation,, Utrecht, Netherlands
• ¹⁸ADEA, New York, United States
• ¹⁹University of the Andes, Chile, Las Condes, Santiago Metropolitan Region (RM), Chile
• ²⁰Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania
• ²¹University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio, Northern Savonia, Finland
• ²²Program in Craniofacial Biology, Department of Orofacial Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles, California, United States
• ²³Department of Pediatrics, Division of Infectious Diseases and Immunology, Cedars Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, California, United States
• ²⁴Gulhane Faculty of Dentistry, University of Health Sciences, Ankara, Türkiye

Background: Haptics-enhanced virtual reality (VR-haptics), a supplementary tool for traditional oral health training, shows promise in enhancing knowledge acquisition, manual dexterity, performance, and student well-being.Aim: The aim of this study was to understand dental educators' perceptions and needs regarding the acceptability and application of VR-haptics in dental education, as well as to gather suggestions for system improvements.Methods: In this global cross-sectional study, the VR-Haptic Thinkers Consortium used a 28-item online questionnaire distributed to 1,023 participants by August 1, 2024. The survey included questions on general demographics, multiple choice and five-point Likert-style questions, and openended questions.Results: A total of 378 responses were collected from 156 institutions. 57% of respondents had a dental doctorate degree and 59% had a PhD. VR-haptic trainers were used more often in preclinical training (94% of responses) than clinical training (46%). The three most common course types with VR-haptics incorporation were restorative, prosthodontic, and endodontic courses. Most respondents thought that the best approach to implementing VR-haptics is alongside phantom head training in the preclinical stage (58%). A third of the feedback on the challenges in VR-haptics utilization in dental training highlighted a need for further hardware and software development, while more than onefourth cited economic issues in system acquisition and housing, and another one-fourth reported low acceptance of the technology among educators and students. The most mentioned enhancement requests for dental trainers were more diverse training scenarios (20%), improved software (19%) and hardware (19%) elements, and advancements in AI-based personalized training and monitoring (18%). Additionally, 10% of respondents suggested gamification features.Conclusions: VR-haptic technology is constantly evolving and will likely become more and more accepted as an integral part of dental hand skill development to complement traditional preclinical training. Future research and development should emphasize transitioning from preclinical to clinical restorative, prosthodontic, endodontic, and implantology procedures as part of individualized education and patient care.