Use of synthetic health data in prototyping for developing dental implant registry services

Abstract

Developing novel applications in healthcare and dentistry can be challenging due to lack of application requirements, uncertain stakeholders, and no available test data. Such conditions exist in tooth implant dentistry, where innovative services are needed to record and communicate data. This study investigates how manually generated synthetic data can support the development and demonstration of new services for a dental implant registry. Furthermore, other objectives are to evaluate the usefulness of the developed services and to determine whether the development process has contributed to improving the data model used by a dental implant register. To answer these objectives, we have through the use of design science methodology developed a high-fidelity dashboard prototype and a synthetic dataset in parallel. The development process was carried out in iterations, involving stakeholders as early as possible. The results indicate that the use of synthetic data to demonstrate possible future services was an essential component of the development process, facilitating early active participation of stakeholders. In particular, data with some realistic qualities were the most valuable in this process. Furthermore, the development process we used resulted in some contributions to the registry's data model, but fewer than expected. In summary, the services we developed were deemed useful by stakeholders. These results suggest that synthetic data generated manually, together with a high-fidelity prototype, may contribute to involving stakeholders early in the development process. This participation may ease the process of identifying application requirements and engaging stakeholders, potentially producing useful features.