Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in 2012, detailing a breakthrough from MIT researchers regarding a magnetic, needleless injection system.
Dedicated researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have successfully invented a remarkable device that quickly injects essential medicine directly through the skin without using a painful needle.
How the Needleless Device Works
Scientists confidently claim that the new device can be precisely programmed to safely deliver a wide range of exact doses to various optimal depths. The needleless device will significantly help improve vital compliance with sensitive patients, especially those younger patients who are incredibly scared of traditional injections.
Scientists cleverly designed the injection system heavily based on an advanced mechanism called a Lorentz-force actuator—a small, highly powerful magnet completely surrounded by a tight coil of wire that is securely attached to a tiny piston inside a glass drug ampoule. The device works actively on electric current, and when a current is suddenly applied, it forcefully interacts with the surrounding magnetic field to rapidly produce a massive force that aggressively pushes the small piston forward, instantly ejecting the liquid drug at very high pressure and extreme velocity straight through the ampoule’s tiny nozzle.
Controlling the Velocity
Scientists claim that the specific speed of the wire coil and the exact velocity imparted directly to the drug can be strictly controlled by the precise amount of electrical pressure applied. The brilliant MIT team carefully generated highly specific pressure profiles that perfectly modulate the electric current.
The resulting electronic waveforms generally consist of two highly distinct phases: an incredibly brief initial high-pressure phase in which the device forcefully ejects the liquid drug at a high-enough velocity to instantly “breach” the outer skin and safely reach the desired physical depth, then a much lower-pressure phase where the remaining drug is safely delivered in a much slower stream that can be quite easily absorbed by the surrounding soft tissue, precisely according to the official MIT report.
Reducing Phobias and Injuries
“If you are genuinely afraid of sharp needles and have to frequently self-inject, strict medical compliance can be a major issue,” said Catherine Hogan, a prominent research scientist at the MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, in a press statement. “We strongly think this specific kind of innovative technology easily gets around some of the deep phobias that normal people may typically have about sharp needles.”
The extensive study also clearly found that the device can massively reduce dangerous needle-stick injuries in clinics. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officially estimates that hospital-based health care workers accidentally prick themselves painfully with used needles roughly 385,000 times each year.
Alternatives and Future Applications
Earlier, other scientists had successfully developed several practical alternatives to the traditional needle. They directly included sticky nicotine patches and compressed air jet injectors, which were quite effective but were genuinely not so good for successfully treating all types of diseases.
Standard nicotine patches slowly release small drugs directly through the skin. But these simple patches can unfortunately only release drug molecules that are small enough to naturally pass straight through the skin’s tiny pores, heavily limiting the specific type of crucial medicine that can be delivered this way.
“If I’m safely breaching a baby’s incredibly delicate skin to safely deliver a vital vaccine, I absolutely won’t need nearly as much pressure as I would definitely need to properly breach my own adult skin,” Hogan says. “We can perfectly tailor the exact pressure profile to be completely able to do that, and that’s genuinely the real beauty of this amazing device.”
“This brilliant design actively provides excellent, precise control over all jet parameters, strictly including the fluid speed and exact doses, and this will vastly enhance the broad applicability of needleless drug delivery devices,” she added.
In the classic science fiction series Star Trek, the spaceship’s medical officer Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy would famously treat serious injuries with a highly futuristic needleless device. In practical tests, the MIT group successfully found that various different skin types may actively require entirely different pressure settings to perfectly deliver adequate liquid volumes of essential drugs safely to the exact desired depth.
This fascinating research is fully reported in the prestigious science journal Medical Engineering and Physics.
