There is no doubt that controlled and pulsatile drug delivery system is an important challenge in medicine over the conventional drug delivery system in case of therapeutic efficacy. However, the conventional drug delivery systems often offer a limited by their inability to drug delivery which consists of systemic toxicity, narrow therapeutic window, complex dosing schedule for long term treatment etc. Therefore, there has been a search for the drug delivery system that exhibit broad enhancing activity for more drugs with less complication. More recently, some elegant study has noted that, a new type of micro-electrochemical system or MEMS-based drug delivery systems called microchip has been improved to overcome the problems related to conventional drug delivery. Moreover, micro-fabrication technology has enabled to develop the implantable controlled released microchip devices with improved drug administration and patient compliance. In this article, we have presented an overview of the investigations on the feasibility and application of microchip as an advanced drug delivery system. Commercial manufacturing materials and methods, related other research works and current advancement of the microchips for controlled drug delivery have also been summarized.
Keywords: Controlled drug delivery; implants; microchip; microelectromechanical systems; microfabrication technology.