Abstract

A Fully-Printable Paperfluidic Device for Oral Health

Debjani Paul, Assistant Professor, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay

A large number of lab-on-a-chip devices have been reported in the literature to address various clinical needs. However, oral health has been neglected by the microfluidics community so far. Dental caries is a highly prevalent and irreversible health condition. The World Health Organization estimates that 60-90% of schoolchildren and a large number of adults in most industrialized nations suffer from dental caries. In developing nations like India, many people lack access to dentists for routine oral health check-ups. Hence, there is a need for a point-of-care (POC) chip that can assess the risk for dental caries in individuals. In this talk I will discuss our efforts to develop a paperfluidic chip that indicates the user’s oral health from a measurement of saliva pH and the activity of caries-causing organisms in the mouth. Paper has recently emerged as a promising substrate for microfluidic devices as it is cheap, abundant and disposable. We have used an environment-friendly technique to pattern hydrophobic regions on paper by dispensing cooking oil through an inkjet printer. The same inkjet printer is used to print the assay reagents, making our paperfluidic chip entirely printable and suitable for large-volume manufacturing.