Arthritis may not be a life threatening disease but it generally happens at the wrong end of life. There is no absolute way to prevent it and all forms of arthritis are painful. It is estimated that in India alone 80% of the 65+ age group population would suffer from wear and tear of joints. 40% of these people are likely to suffer from severe osteoarthritis. And by 2020 the number of 65+ age group population in India is likely to be about 177 million compared to the 100 million in this age group in 2010. Current available solutions include orally administered drugs or injectable and visco supplementation which might not be effective sometimes.

This project proposes to develop an affordable non-invasive drug delivery system to administer pain relieving drugs for a prolonged period of time without any requirement for human intervention in patients suffering from rheumatoid arthritis or osteoarthritis. The system would deliver the drug directly to the desired area and would maintain the drug level in therapeutic range unlike administration via oral or injectable devices, which cause the drug levels to over or under shoot the required therapeutic range thereby making our system to have higher efficiency than the conventional systems. Since our intended system does not cause any overshoot or undershoot in the administered drug level, a comparatively a lesser amount of drug may be effective at par with doses required in conventional methods. The system would be non-invasive which makes it less prone to infections caused by invasive methods. The system would maintain the level for prolonged time duration eliminating the need for frequent oral administration. It would serve as an alternate treatment for patients with osteoarthritis or rheumatoid arthritis in which oral medications and/or surgery are not options or are ineffective.