The current literature vividly demonstrates the difficulties in distinguishing between benign, potentially malignant disorders, and early oral cancer, leading to delays in diagnosis of these oral pathologies. Most oral medicine and cancer centres report that oral cancer patients present at very late stages of the disease, with regional spread of this malignancy to the neck and beyond. Recent Cochrane reviews highlight the limitations of traditional diagnostic methods, namelyclinical oral examination andwidely available commercial adjunctive aids. 

In this special issue, we explore how digital health technologies could offer a solution to the challenges encountered in the early diagnosis of oral cancer and oral potentially malignant disorders and provide an Introduction to digital health technologies and Artificial Intelligence (AI) and their applications in healthcare, including how these new technologies could assist us in early clinical diagnosis of oral cancer. Digital health devices and AI techniques and tools in cancer diagnosis are currently being developed as research tools for screening oral potentially malignant disorders and oral cancer in field studies, and we provide case studies on AI in cancer diagnosis. In some chapters, diagnostic studies assessing the ability of digital health technologies to appropriately perform screening and comparing their performance with results from human clinicians will be presented and discussed. Data-driven approaches for oral cancer diagnosis are currently being explored, and the chapter authors of this special issue are all keen to share their experiences while advancing these techniques to aid in the early detection of oral cancer and to assist in precision medicine.

Keywords: Oral cancer, potentially malignant disorders, early diagnosis, cancer detection, tele medicine, tele dentistry, primary care