Can you ever imagine of taking care of your oral health without brushing? Well, it is not that simple. But a scientist from the city, Chinnappareddy Soujanya, has invented a new motorised toothbrush, which she claims will remove all hardened plaque and other bacterial deposits on gums or crevices of teeth.
How it works
The invention — Ionic Toothbrush — is simple to operate. All one has to do is to place the brush on the teeth. The positive ionic charge on the bristles of the brush and the same positive ionic charge on gums will result in plaque getting detached from both teeth and gums.
Ionic Toothbrushes are the future, she says.
This is a three-month $2.5-billion internship project she got from Proctor and Gamble (P&G), which she took it to its logical conclusion, earning her a job in the company in its Singapore Skin Care products development facility.
The brush, which looks almost like any normal one, penetrates into all the layers of unwanted plaque or other deposits on teeth and gums, and removes them with ease without causing any harm to the mouth.
Her goal is to develop a commercially available power brush with improved efficacy based on ‘iontophoresis.’.
She has done research on establishment of electrochemical conditions associated with ‘iontophoretic’ brush and characterised it for safety while in vivo use by humans.
The young scientist was a student of P.B. Siddhartha College of Arts and Science here. As she did not qualify in EAMCET to get a seat in MBBS, she went on to do her B.Sc. in biochemistry and M.Sc. from Bangalore.
Later, she set her eyes on research in the United States. “In the U.S., resources are much better for a budding scientist to make a mark,” she says.
She completed her Ph.D. in three years on ‘biomedical systems’ that involved design of ‘sense and treat’ methodologies.
Bio-markers
Using bio-computing, she demonstrated how use of physiologically relevant biomarkers of blood as input signals can help identify the problems in the human body to arrive at a medical management solution.
The output is called ‘injury output,’ she told The Hindu .
This could be helpful in war conditions, where jawans get injured, but doctors cannot reach them immediately.
These bio-markers will tell what exactly has gone wrong for the doctors to take a final decision based on the output signals.
