THE EDITOR'S CORNER
Conservation of human effort and elimination of human error is a hallmark of current orthodontic thought in practice administration and in treatment technique.
In this issue of JCO, Dr. Larry Andrews in an installment of his series on the Straight-Wire Appliance pictures the wire-benders of years past laboriously forming ideal edgewise archwires with remarkably similar first, second and third order bends. This repetitive and difficult task was enormously wasteful of human effort, but perhaps was necessary in the evolution of orthodontic treatment objectives and appliance mechanics.
Dr. Andrews is certainly making a land mark contribution to both with his synthesis of the Six Keys of Occlusion in his standardization of treatment objectives, and in his development of the Straight-Wire Appliance as a vehicle to achieve those objectives in an efficient manner, sparing of human effort and human error.
Dr. Sam Callender has applied the same yardstick to practice administration (JCO, January 1976). He has computerized orthodontic practice administration to extract high performance from machines in areas where machines excel and to free people to perform "people tasks". This has not only resulted in conservation of human energy and reduction of human error, but it has permitted a downgrading of repetitive, mechanical tasks in the hierarchy of costs.
The principle of downgrading task assignments in orthodontic practice is not new, nor is the principle of further downgrading from auxiliaries to machines. We have had the MagCard typewriter, which Jim Reynolds introduced in orthodontics, which permitted orthodontists to achieve a new level of communication in a variety and volume that would have required an additional employee to achieve. We have also seen how the Acme Electrofile with random filing and instant retrieval may replace a repetitive chore which previously required a great deal of an employee's time.
We are now in the age of the computer and we are indebted to Dr. Callender for harnessing the special talents of the computer to the administrative organization of all facets of an orthodontic practice. In actual practice, this has resulted in elimination of up to 80% of a bookkeeper's job, with far less possibility of human error; the amalgamation of numerous office forms and records into two records and the conversion of these to microfilm for convenient storage and retrieval of all patient treatment and financial information, using microfiche viewers; the phasing out of a percentage of auxiliary personnel with no loss of efficiency; and, best of all, freeing people--the doctor and his staff--to care for people--the patient, his parents and his dentist .
Bob Schulhof at Rocky Mountain Data Systems (JCO, December 1975) has applied the computer to a broad spectrum of orthodontic research for a significant contribution to our knowledge; and to the development of a system of orthodontic diagnosis, treatment objectives and treatment evaluation through a consideration of more factors and relationships that a human would be able to do or be likely to do with paper and pencil.
It is not intended to imply that only these few people are in the forefront of progress in conserving human effort and eliminating human error in orthodontics. This certainly seems to be the direction that many people in orthodontics are taking. Paradoxically computerization and mechanization should have a humanizing effect on our specialty. Personnel will be, as they should be, more concerned with personal relationships. The emphasis will shift from the mechanics of treatment and office administration to public relations, patient motivation, education, prevention, and practice research. For the doctor, it will mean more time to devote to a study of his patients both in terms of their behavior and in terms; of their morphological problems.
