MIT Jet-Injection Shoots Medicines Directly Into Blood Stream Without Needles

If you're afraid of needles and yet have to inject medicines into your blood on regular basis, you should thank the talented mechanical engineers at Massachusetts Institute Of Technology (#-Link-Snipped-#). MIT's engineering team, led by Ian Hunter, the George N. Hatsopoulos Professor of Mechanical Engineering has developed a jet-injection system that delivers doses of medicine in different quantities to various depths. The design of the jet is built around the Lorentz Force (wikipedia link) actuator mechanism. A small yet powerful magnet is surrounded by coil of wires that carry current. The magnet is attached to a piston that pushes the drug at a very high speed (approximately equal to speed of sound in air, 343.2 metres per second). When the current flows through the coil, the magnet drives the piston at various pressure and velocity determined by the magnetite of the current flowing through the coil. The drug breaches the skin with a nozzle as wide as mosquito’s proboscis.


Image courtesy of the MIT BioInstrumentation Lab

MIT team has created various pressure profiles to determine the current required for various types of skin. Such a mechanism of injecting drugs into the blood stream would be ideal for the diabetic patients who have to administer the insulin almost on daily basis. The technology will also aid in reducing the needle-stick injuries. Check out following video that talks a bit about the device -



Via: #-Link-Snipped-#