This website will close on 30 April 2024. After this date, your content will not be accessible. Please contact info@healthinnovationnwc.nhs.uk for more information.

Under evaluation with potential for adoption
Share innovation

Brush DJ: Oral Health App

By Ben Underwood, Brush DJ Added 22nd Mar, 2016 Updated 23rd Jul, 2019

The main feature of the free Brush DJ app is a timer, which plays 2 minutes of music from the user’s device or streaming service. This makes the mundane task of brushing effectively more enjoyable and therefore more likely to happen. The app also contains the evidence-based information given in the Public Health England document ‘Delivering Better Oral Health’.

Music is the ‘hook’ to grab attention and encourage behaviour change.

 

About

To-date the Brush DJ app has been downloaded in 199 countries on to 355,916 devices and is the only oral health app to have been accepted into the NHS Digital Apps Library https://apps.beta.nhs.uk/brush-dj/ . No passwords, in-app purchases or personal details are required to use the app and it can be enjoyed with any type of toothbrush.

Research has been carried out investigating user perception of the app and a paper reporting the results was published in the British Dental Journal http://www.nature.com/bdj/journal/v219/n4/full/sj.bdj.2015.659.html .

Videos showing how to carry out basic oral hygiene tasks along with lots more information can be found on the website www.brushdj.com  on the Brush DJ Facebook http://www.facebook.com/pages/Brush-DJ/245442625526057 , Twitter https://twitter.com/BrushDJ  and YouTube http://www.youtube.com/user/brush3000/videos?view=0  pages.I hope the app will go some way towards reducing the estimated £1.7 billion of NHS dental budget in England that is spent on the treatment of preventable disease and help reduce the number of children who require extraction of teeth under general anaesthesia.

Useful resources

How to brush your teeth with a manual toothbrush

How to use dental floss

How to use an interdental brush

Related Innovations