Don't like needles? I know many people who are afraid of them. These days needle-less technology for injecting medicine isn't new, but until now, that tech relied on compressed air or gas cartridges to breach the skin.

Now, a team of medical and mechanical engineering researchers from MIT has developed a new technology for needle-less injection that relies on not compressed molecules but magnetic energy.

It will use a "Lorentz-force actuator", a magnet surrounded by a coil of wire that's attached to a piston inside the drug ampoule, powered by an electrical current to create an adjustable high pressure jet and ejects out a microscopically narrow nozzle. It then penetrates the skin to deliver highly controlled doses at different depths.

The device will operate at nearly the speed of sound and is capable of injecting a drug in high pressure doses of up to 100 megapascals. All this happens under a millisecond.

Needle-less needles can have a lot of benefits. First to those with an aversion to needles, but it could also be beneficial to people with diabetes, who have to routinely self administer injections on themselves. This means less needle injuries. And the risk of contracting a disease from a contaminated needle.

According to Ian Hunter, the lead researcher, the device can also take a drug in powdered form and it vibrates it at such a rate that the drug behaves as though it were liquid being injected into the skin.
 
[GizMag]