Nanopharmaceuticals: Healthcare Applications and Safety Evaluations

The prospects of nanotechnology in enhancing the quality of healthcare delivery cannot be overemphasized. Indeed, the advancement in nanotechnology is now a motivation for the increasing and wider acceptance of nanotechnology for applications in healthcare improvement particularly for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. The use of nanotechnology to enhance the quality of pharmaceutical delivery forms the bulk of the emerging field referred to as the nanopharmaceuticals. This has created an interdisciplinary approach which has the potential of improving pharmaceutical delivery which is among the most promising and exciting innovations in healthcare strategy. As revealed in this chapter, nanopharmaceuticals offers remarkable prospects for improved healthcare delivery by reason of their additional potentials including increased surface area, enhanced solubility, increased oral bioavailability, dosage reduction and ease of attachment to functional groups amongst others. These unique features of nanopharmaceuticals are part of the merits which are conspicuously nonexistent with the conventional/traditional pharmaceuticals. Thus, this chapter discusses the nanopharmaceuticals vis-a-vis the applications and safety evaluations.