The Training Effectiveness and Usability Evaluation of the Thai Version of the Oral Health Assessment Tool (T-OHAT) Mobile Application for Village Health Volunteers.

Aims: To address challenges in accessing dental care for functionally dependent patients, including those in remote and hill tribe communities, by developing a mobile application for village health volunteers (VHVs) to screen oral health problems, communicate with healthcare professionals, improve referrals, and ensure timely oral health services.

Methods and results: Dentists and programmers co-designed the "Thai version of Oral Health Assessment Tool" (T-OHAT) mobile application, offering training tutorials, real-time screenings, referral letter generation, and appointment management. Sixty-four VHVs were trained face-to-face by a dentist for 3 h followed by 3 days of self-paced exercises and summative evaluations within the app. OHAT scores from VHVs were compared with dentists' standards, and app usability was assessed. Posttest scores improved, with reduced screening times observed after training. The inter-examiner reliability between VHVs and dentists ranged from 0.81 to 0.99. Assessment of saliva condition exhibited the lowest kappa value among all categories. User satisfaction scored 4.58 ± 0.59.

Conclusions: This pilot study demonstrated that the T-OHAT mobile application effectively trained VHVs to identify oral health problems in functionally dependent patients based on case scenarios. Further research is needed to investigate the app's effectiveness in real-world settings.