ProfessorHeiko Spallek

Adjunct Professor Spallek’s research projects have a foundation in the fields of education, usability engineering, medical and dental informatics and computer science. He has published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers and a textbook for Dental Informatics (published in Germany and the US).

Adoption of Evidence-Based Medicine: Professor Spallek served as PI of several NIH-supported research projects aiming to improve the adoption of Evidence-Based Dentistry, such as "A Clinic-Randomized Trial of a Clinical Decision Support System to Improve Dental Provider Delivery of Brief Tobacco Interventions and Quitline Referrals" (NIH: 1U01DE026135-01: US$2.4m). As principal investigator he received a US$900,000 federal contract from the National Institutes on Drug Abuse to develop a “Center of Excellence in Pain Education: Pain Challenges in Primary Care.”

Using Health Information Technology (HIT) to connect oral and systemic health: Professor Spallek’s informatics research has always been related to improving the translation of research findings from “bench to bedside.” Specifically, he focussed on the lack of connection between dental and medical Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems, depriving dentists from the rich information stored in medical records and physicians from learning about the oral health status of their patients. The long-term goal of his research is to promote the meaningful integration of information derived from medical EHRs into dental EHRs to provide point-of-care clinical decision support.

Professor Spallek is a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee for Dentroid Technologies and Advisor to Eyes of AI.