Emerging from MIT’s Mechanical Engineering department is a jet-powered shot, innovating and replacing the application of many needles. This technology could bring the sensation of receiving an injection down to the mere bother of a mosquito bite – possibly less. The team’s mechanism utilizes a ‘Lorentz-effect actuator,’ which is described as:A small, powerful magnet surrounded by a coil of wire that's attached to a piston inside a drug ampoule. When current is applied, it interacts with the magnetic field to produce a force that pushes the piston forward, ejecting the drug at very high pressure and velocity (almost the speed of sound in air) out through the ampoule's nozzle — an opening as wide as a mosquito's proboscis.This could be great news to needle phobics. D. Keith Lamb, founder of needlephobia.info finds that about 10 percent of Americans have a phobia with needles, divided into a few different categories: Hyperalgesic, the fear of pain. Resistive, the combative anxiety against being controlled. Associative, suffering from emotional trauma and fear of the injection and Vaso-Vagal, or the largest group; those who fear the thought or sight of the needle itself (half of all phobics). “I believe I have tried everything available,” Lamb writes. “Most needle phobes are actually afraid of the needle itself, rather than the pain. For me, it was pain…pure and simple. I am convinced that the technology exists today to ‘solve’ this problem. The challenge is to find a legitimate way to access that technology. The ultimate challenge is to understand this fear well enough that it can be prevented.”Perhaps these jet injections of the future will solve needle phobias, patient compliance and accidental sticking. However, all questions remain regarding disposability, sterilization procedures, cheap distribution and deployment, pharmaceutical developments (MIT’s YouTube title says this "may be the end of needles"; but I guess I’m a tad skeptic). Perhaps the beginning of the end? My mom is a nurse. Growing up, I was fortunate to get quite a few vaccines and shots in the comfort of home. Now needles don’t bug me. If these jets show up at the drugstore for cold and flu season in the next couple of years I’ll be impressed. But I’d be much more impressed if we could all get over our fear of needles.
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