I have written before about social media and influencers in world oral health. Digital media is an important part of College activity, and I am often amazed at the amount of work that goes into our overall marketing and communications strategy. The team are exceptional at what they do and turn ideas, words and a few pictures into fantastic articles.
Transforming ideas and initial phrases and sentences into the final published version is satisfying. The endless information on the internet is a real boon. Artificial intelligence (AI) is all around us literally and metaphorically. I have, however, reservations about the value of AI tools used for web searches though. Intelligence in its purest sense relates to understanding, logic, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, critical thinking and overall, problem-solving. Intelligence is therefore a human characteristic. These are all underpinned by a sense of creativity and to date, I have yet to find an internet AI system that creates something new. There is of course huge potential here, but at the moment the vast majority of AI tools on the internet are machine learning algorithms. All of the systems I have explored are essentially web crawlers or scrapers that scan the internet for words and phrases and repurpose them in the same way as a covers band.
However, there are some aspects to web crawling that are interesting and these can be a pleasant but inconvenient distraction when I am under pressure to complete a piece of writing. We all like a bit of serendipity but it can take up several valuable minutes and occasionally hours! Take Google Trends for example, which has taken me off the topic I was originally going to write, and has become the main topic for this blog. I find Google Trends fascinating. I have been running a search on 'dentist', 'dentistry' and 'dental health' periodically for some time now. Intriguingly, the UK and Ireland are frequently in the top five of the 'interest by region' list and in the 'related topics', 'NHS dentistry' is usually well up the list too. Naturally, the US & Canada, Australia & New Zealand are also big fans of all things dental as Google search terms. You might also be interested to know that the popularity of dentist and dentistry as a search term has doubled in the last 20 years. This shows the importance of digital media to our patients and the wider population. There are of course specific providers of dental care that feature regularly as big trenders on Google; no surprises, but there are also some other items of interest too. 'Academic degree', 'human tooth', 'dentistry for children', 'dentist near me' are frequent search items with other digitally literate countries such as Iraq, the Philippines, Caribbean countries, African nations and India regularly flying the flag for high levels of interest.
Google Trends has the potential to help us all keep informed about continual changes going on in dentistry and wider healthcare. It is a tool that can be used to track trends in patient preferences and desires as well as helping with marketing and communication with our own patients and the wider population. It could also help all of us keep ahead of the curve, whether you have been a dental professional over a long career or if you are relatively new to the profession. Making use of a powerful tool such as Google Trends could easily help you work through the continually changing dental landscape.
What about our own College? Well, Malta is the number one country showing interest in RCSEd on a consistent basis, followed by Sudan, UK, Oman, the Gulf countries, Pakistan, Egypt, Hong Kong and then a series of countries in the ASEAN region. In terms of 'Royal College' as a more general term, exam dates are the number one related query with test papers being close behind. Knowing the importance of summative assessments in medical and dental careers, I guess we would all anticipate exams and past papers to feature high on the list!
Why do trends on the internet matter? There are literally trillions of searches each year meaning that this is big data, something that provides a unique perspective and an accompanying social commentary on societal changes. Anyone can use Google Trends to explore the popularity of a certain topic, either general or specific and, in particular over time, location, as well the related searches people run. It has to be noted though, that Google use a sampling method to estimate the results. Results are indexed to 100, with 100 being the maximum for the time and location so comparing across terms needs to be undertaken with care.
So, this provides us with some information on what people are searching for in relation to the topics that are close to my own interests. In many ways, the level of interest in NHS dentistry is the surprise for me since the volume of searches has quadrupled since 2004, something of which our politicians should take notice as they prepare for the next UK general election. It is good to know that in the background, the things I would have expected to be important to the world are in fact regularly searched on Google.
In the meantime, I’ll keep writing blogs and columns for the Faculty of Dentistry and our College. Wordsmithing is cathartic and I have yet to find an AI tool that produces exactly what I would like to convey. I’ll try not to be diverted from the planned topic for the next blog.
I am always happy to hear directly from Members and Fellows, so please get in touch via dental@rcsed.ac.uk.