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COMMUNITY CASE STUDY article
Front. Dent. Med.
Sec. Systems Integration
Volume 6 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fdmed.2025.1576646
This article is part of the Research Topic VR-Haptic Technologies and Their Applications in Dental Education View all articles
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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.
Keywords: dental education, Challenges, Haptic technology, implementation barriers, virtual reality
Received: 14 Feb 2025; Accepted: 28 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Bencharit, Quinn, Stittoni-Pino, Arias, Schick, Rampf, Byrne, Shazib, Örtengren, Lam, Liukkonen, Rice, Nagasawa, Ranauta, Zafar, Bágyi, Greany, Luai, Øilo, Rederiene, Stolberg, Gül, Tricio, Chau, Pantea, Mutluay, Lingström, Klein, Usta, Suominen and Felszeghy. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Szabolcs Felszeghy, University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio, Northern Savonia, Finland
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
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