Fully Instrumented Occlusal Splints for Point-of-Care Applications and Designed for Additive Manufacturing – e-Splint

Practitioners have identified the need to collect biophysical, biochemical and biomechanical data in the oral cavity of their patients in order to establish a diagnosis, guide therapy, or even prevent or monitor the evolution of various pathologies. In the framework of the development of personalized healthcare, the dental splint, already commonly used as a therapeutic tool by many patients appears to be a well suited platform to develop a sensing and connected medical device integrating electronic parts to gather information on the manducatory system disorders as well as on biomarkers contained in saliva. Taking advantage of the boom in additive manufacturing, the aim of the e-Splint project is therefore to produce a connected multisensory platform that can be placed in the mouth, without any assembly operations. The consortium is proposing a transdisciplinary approach to tackle well identified scientific and technological issues such as the integration of over molded electronic devices in a complex shaped polymer object, through the use of printed and flexible electronics methods. The achievement of this objective relies on the development of suitable sensors and modular compact electronic boards, the design of a splint made by additive manufacturing and enabling its instrumentation, the evaluation of its mechanical behavior, its shaping and evaluation with in vitro tests and finally the validation of the patients and practitioners acceptability of the fully instrumented splint.