Automated Oral Care Device
Automated Dental Care Device For Persons With Oral Hygiene Disabilities
Project Description
The Automated Oral Care Device is a hands-free automatic system in the form of a comfortable mouthpiece to simplify routine oral hygiene care of Individuals with neuromuscular, neurological, and developmental disorders, including those suffering physical injury or tremors. The device will operate using powered, automatically moving bristles and is simply inserted into the mouth to automatically remove plaque and debris. The mouthpiece includes embedded sensors to adjust the firmness and speed of the bristle motion, and to wirelessly transmit usage information to caregivers monitoring adherence and status.
The goal of this new easily operated device is to increase plaque removal, oral care frequency, and adherence, to help reduce the risk of oral disease in individuals whose disabilities may interfere with use of standard oral hygiene devices.
Societal Benefits
Roughly 52 million disabled Americans encounter barriers to routine, comfortable, and effective oral hygiene self-care, resulting from problems with grasp, muscle control, range of motion, and reduced manual dexterity. Many of these individuals require assistance from caregivers to perform daily oral hygiene, reducing independence. Caregivers often report great difficulty in safely and comfortably performing these services due to lack of training, time, or confidence in managing the complexities of oral hygiene care.
Current devices to assist in the daily oral care for disabled persons show only limited manual solutions, including potentially uncomfortable props to keep the mouth open and modified grips for standard toothbrushes. Even current electric toothbrushes still require a degree of manual control. Inadequate daily hygiene promotes oral disease in disabled individuals further exacerbating dental care and overall health. A significant unmet need exists to support daily routines for those with oral hygiene disabilities and their caregivers with a safe, automatic, affordable, easily operated, effective solution to facilitate regular oral care and reduce caregiver burden.
Broader Impacts
The commercial market for technical solutions for routine oral care is sizeable. The high rates of neurological and neuromuscular disabilities and injuries, an aging population, per capita healthcare expenditures, and penetration rate of healthcare information technology are driving this market. Enhanced solutions and significant cost savings to consumers are benefits of this growth. Global medical automated systems are expected to reach $17.9 billion by 2020, with patient acceptance growing for medical robotics in non-invasive health care. Improved preventive care for those with disabilities becomes even more important given other common financial barriers to routine dental care, including the relative lack of dental coverage by private dental insurance, Medicare, and Medicaid. Medicaid coverage for disabled individuals is a particularly difficult problem due to coverage limitations, low reimbursements, and nonparticipation by dental providers.
A strong commercial market for the proposed automatic care device is further supported by oral hygiene challenges in long-term care facilities, where daily oral care often suffers due to lack of knowledge, motivation, skill, and time among direct care staff. Thus, a large market potential is clearly available, based both on the high number of individuals in the targeted population segments with developmental and acquired disabilities in oral hygiene.
National Institutes of Health Project Description
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