Needle-Free Injections

Magnetic Jet Injection Device Can Shoot Any Drug Through the Skin, No Needle Required
Needle-Free Injections This device deliversa high-velocity jet of liquid that breaches the skin at the speed of sound. MIT BioInstrumentation Lab
Whether you’re at the doctor’s office or taking medicine at home, future injections could be a lot less painful with this new gadget developed at MIT. Insteadof a sterile metal point penetrating your skin, it fires a jet of medicine through yourskin at the speed of sound.
It’s similar to a normal syringe, except instead of a needle plunger, it uses a Lorentz force actuator, made from a magnet surrounded by a conductive coil. When a current is turned on, the magneticfield interacts with the current to producea force. That force kicks a piston, which ejects a drug that has been embedded inside the capsule. The speed of the ejection and the depth it will reach can be controlled by altering the current.
To penetrate the skin, the ejection happens at ultra high speeds, almost equivalent to the speed of sound through air. The drug flows through an opening that’s about as wide as a mosquito proboscis, according to MIT News .
Researchers led by Ian Hunter and Catherine Hogan tested a prototype device with two different velocities: One can breach the skin and reach deep into tissue, and another can deliver drugs more slowly, so they can be absorbed by the skin.