Developing and Defining the GAPA Digital Infrastructure for Coordinated Oral Health Planning Across Home Care Organizations

By
Sara Björns
Jessica Persson Kylén
October 9, 2026

Digital Health

At a Glance

Category	Detail
Condition	Oral health care planning for older adults receiving home care
Key Mechanisms	A shared digital planning environment was specified to make assessments, preferences and consent, agreed actions, responsible actors, and follow-up visible across municipal home care and public dental services.
Target Population	Older adults with extensive care needs receiving home care; the platform is intended for use by authorised municipal home care and public dental service personnel.
Care Setting	Cross-organisational coordination between Swedish municipal home care services and public dental services.

Key Highlights

The study developed and specified a high-fidelity digital platform for shared oral health care planning across home care and public dental services.
Platform requirements included structured oral health assessments, preferences and consent, agreed actions, responsible actors, follow-up dates, and declined recommendations.
The design aimed to keep unresolved oral health needs visible across organisational boundaries.
Development used iterative stakeholder participation, co-design, and integrated knowledge translation principles.
The study evaluated neither implementation nor effectiveness and included no patient outcome data.

Guideline-Based Recommendations

Diagnosis

The specified platform requirements include documentation of the Revised Oral Assessment Guide (ROAG) and conditional assessments of oral hygiene ability using OHAI.

Management

The platform was designed to support shared planning by recording older adults’ preferences and consent, agreed actions, responsible actors, and declined recommendations.

Monitoring & Follow-up

The design includes follow-up dates and visibility of unresolved oral health needs across organisational boundaries.

Risks

The article describes fragmented documentation, unclear responsibility, and limited information exchange as barriers to continuity and coordination.
The study did not assess platform effectiveness, implementation outcomes, or patient outcomes.

Patient & Prescribing Data

Older adults with extensive care needs receiving home care; no patient outcome data were collected in this development study.

The platform was specified to support planning of daily oral care and dental treatment recommendations. The article reports no prescribing or treatment-effect data.

Clinical Best Practices

Include older adults’ expressed preferences and consent in oral health care planning.
Make assessments, agreed actions, responsible actors, and follow-up information available to authorised users across care organisations.
Record declined recommendations and keep unresolved oral health needs visible.
Treat the platform as a developed specification requiring later feasibility, implementation, and outcome evaluation; those evaluations were not part of this study.