Twenty years of handling evaluations and practice-based research by the PREP Panel.

UNLABELLED: Dental materials which are user friendly make clinicians' lives simpler by facilitating their placement in patients' teeth: accordingly, the handling of materials is of relevance to the clinician. This paper traces the history of product handling evaluations and practice-based research by the PREP Panel, a group of practice-based researchers based in the UK. CLINICAL RELEVANCE: The ease of handling of dental materials is important in dental practice, given that practitioners may find that a material which is difficult to handle leads to suboptimal clinical results.