Exploiting dental implants for creating wired implantable health monitoring devices

Abstract

In this work, we propose a physical gateway, which resembles a modified dental implant that goes directly through gum or other soft tissues inside the oral cavity, to establish a secure and permanent connection to wired implantable health monitoring and controlling (IHMC) devices and systems. The proposed physical gateway has parts acting as external access points that have terminals for cables, wires, fiber optics, or tubes that go through the gateway to IHMC devices and systems to allow transmission of signals or materials to or from the implanted devices. This novel feature can be utilized for powering IHMC devices and systems with high functionality and computational power. Furthermore, it facilitates securely communicating with IHMC devices and systems with vital duties and allows transferring materials for refilling the tanks inside these devices and systems or transferring some samples and substances from inside body to outside without requiring additional invasive operations.