Involving dental practitioners in setting the dental research agenda.

This paper describes the process set up by the BDA and the Shirley Glasstone Hughes (SGH) Trust as a result of their will to involve dental practitioners in dental research prioritisation, so that funding could be directed towards research that practitioners would find useful. The paper considers the technical, operational and economic feasibility of using an online system to determine the research priorities of primary care practitioners and describes the extent to which the system worked in practice. The aim of the work described was to ensure that the research commissioned by SGH Trust actually served practitioners' needs and promotes the use of evidence in general dental practice.