Jet Injector from MIT offers needle-free drug delivery system

For those of you who absolutely loathe the way a needle prick seem to make you feel as though your entire body is on fire, then you might be interested to know that you no longer need to go through the sharp pain associated with an injection in the future, assuming MIT’s Jet Injector is widely adopted by the medical industry. MIT’s engineering team, with Ian Hunter at the helm, have managed to come up with this jet-injection system that is capable of delivering doses of medication in different quantities to various depths.

The whole design of the jet was based on the Lorentz-force actuator mechanism, where a tiny albeit powerful magnet will be surrounded by coil of wires which will be able to carry current. This magnet which is attached to a piston will push the drug at extremely high speeds – equal to that of the speed of sound in air that amounts to 343.2 metres per second. Whenever current flows through the coil, the magnet will drive the piston at different pressure and velocity which are determined by the magnetite of the current flowing through the coil. As a result, the drug will breach the skin with a nozzle that is as wide as mosquito’s proboscis.

No more pain? I’m all for it. [Press Release]

Edwin Kee
Categories: Medical