Setting up a dental practice for graduating dentists in India can be daunting because of the cost of equipment – particularly the chair which can cost from $1500 to $7500.
However, three students of the Indian Institute of Technology, in Kanpur in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh have come up with a solution. Amit Kundal, Mohit Tewari and Shiva Kumar M., who were part of the Design Department at the institute were picked on the basis of an interview conducted at Stanford University. Mentored by Larry Liefer, a professor of mechanical engineering at Stanford, and working with four students from Pontificia Universidad Javeriana University of Bogota, Columbia who were their external academic partners, the team designed ‘Flux‘, a dentist’s chair that is currently undergoing clinical trials. If it makes it to the market it could be available to dentists for $300!
- The features of Flux include:
- Light weight
- Occupies less space
- An adjustable neck rest
- Speakers for playing music
- Movable instrument trolley that stays with the dentist
“We wanted to make sure that the primary functions of the chair were not hampered. We were focusing on an incremental innovation rather than a radical innovation so that it can be easily adopted by the users,” Amit Kundal, the leader of the team, told ScoopWhoop.
The students managed to bring down the cost considerably thanks to the use of less material, local manufacturing, and reducing the size of the big light that is used by the dentist. They’re hoping that the lower cost and size of the chair will mean that dental care will be more widely available to rural areas in the country.
