Background. As dental offices switch from traditional paper records to electronic records, data safety becomes a concern. Simple safety measures such as off-site data backup should be considered by dental offices that have electronic records.
Conclusions. Loss of practice data such as patient charts, financial records and the appointment schedule could result in serious damage to a dental practice. Electronic computer records can be safeguarded using a backup system. There are several acceptable backup systems that have different benefits and shortcomings. Online backup is the newest backup method, and it offers some significant improvements over older systems.
Practice Implications. By understanding why data need to be backed up, what data need to be backed up and how to back them up, dental practices can protect their practice data properly. Failure to follow proper backup procedures could result in significant loss.
