D-IONIC

Innovative Solution Overview

Pain management during dental procedures is a cornerstone for successful daily practice.  Currently, local anaesthesia is administered using conventional needle-and-syringe injections. However, the appearance of long needles and pain associated with it often leads to anxiety and phobia deterring patients from dental visits.

From our market surveys, both the sight and feeling of the needle contribute to the dental anxiety that patients face. To address this unmet clinical need, our team has developed an innovative drug delivery platform designed to provide a more comfortable and patient-friendly alternative to conventional dental injections.

Novel Drug Delivery Platform: Dental IONIC (D-IONIC)

Dental IONIC (D-IONIC) is a minimally invasive and painless approach to dental anaesthesia delivery.

D-IONIC integrates a proprietary conductive microneedle (MN) array with iontophoresis (ITP) technology to facilitate efficient transoral delivery of local anaesthetic agents. The microneedles create minimally invasive microchannels across the oral mucosa, while iontophoresis enhances active transport of the drug into deeper tissues, enabling penetration towards the nerves within the alveolar bone responsible for dental sensation.

Clinical Impact

Patients with dental anxiety often require additional consultation, reassurance, behavioural management, and staged treatment approaches before anaesthesia can be administered. These measures can prolong appointments by 10 minutes or more and negatively impact clinic efficiency.

By providing a less intimidating and more comfortable anaesthesia delivery method, D-IONIC has the potential to streamline clinical workflows, improve patient cooperation, and reduce treatment delays. The technology may also decrease appointment cancellations and treatment avoidance, ultimately enhancing patient outcomes and improving the operational and financial efficiency of dental practices.

D-IONIC represents a transformative approach to dental anaesthesia delivery by combining innovative microneedle and iontophoretic technologies into a single platform. The system offers a pain-reduced, anxiety-minimising, and clinically effective alternative to traditional injections, with the potential to significantly improve both patient experience and dental practice efficiency.