Method and apparatus for skin absorption enhancement and transdermal drug delivery

A system for enhancing absorption of a substance provided on a region of a patient's skin, comprising:

• a probe configured to provide the substance to the region of the patient's skin, the probe comprising:
• an array of electrodes provided on a head of the probe;
• a substance holding unit configured to temporarily hold the substance to be provided on the region of the patient's skin;
• a pulse generator configured to generate a sequence of bursts of electrical pulses to the array of electrodes that are disposed against the region of the patient's skin, so as to provide the bursts of electrical pulses to the region of the patient's skin;
• a substance applying unit configured to transfer the substance from the substance holding unit to the head of the probe,
• wherein the pulse generator includes at least first and second transformer arranged to produce out-of-phase pulsing with respect to each other
• wherein the pulse generator includes peak current limiting means for maintaining a current applied to the patient's skin to be below a predetermined current level.

A system for enhancing absorption of a substance provided on a region of a patient's skin, comprising:

• a probe configured to provide the substance to the region of the patient' skin, the probe comprising:
• an array of electrodes provided on a head of the probe;
• a substance holding unit configured to temporarily hold the substance to be provided on the region of the patient's skin;
• a pulse generator configured to generate a sequence of bursts of electrical pulses to the array of electrodes that are placed adjacent to the skin;
• a substance applying unit configured to transfer the substance from the substance holding unit to the head of the probe,
• wherein the pulse generator included at least first and second transformers arranged to produce out-of-phase pulsing with respect to each other, and
• wherein no pulses are output by the pulse generator in between consecutive bursts of electrical pulses.

A system for enhancing absorption of a substance provided on a region of a patient's skin, comprising:

• a probe configured to provide the substance to the region of the patient' skin, the probe comprising:
• an array of electrodes provided on a head of the probe;
• a substance holding unit configured to temporarily hold the substance to be provided on the region of the patient's skin;
• a pulse generator configured to generate a sequence of bursts of electrical pulses to the array of electrodes that are placed adjacent to the skin;
• a substance applying unit configured to transfer the substance from the substance holding unit to the head of the probe,
• wherein the pulse generator is a magnetic device for energy storage, which provides for pulses to be output in alternate polarities in each of the sequence of bursts, and
• wherein the transformer includes peak current limiting means for maintaining a current applied to the patient's skin to be below a predetermined current level.