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HP's Inkjet Technology Used to Administer Drugs
jedrick conner writes "Hewlett-Packard's microneedle technology, used in its inkjet cartridges, could soon be used in transdermal patches to deliver a time-controlled release of drugs to patients.
Still at the prototype stage, the patch will likely be 25 mm square in size and 3 mm thick. It will incorporate an array of microneedles that are between 75 and 100 microns, which will penetrate the top dry layer of the skin, also known as the stratum corneum.
Above the microneedles is an array of wells, [and] those wells can hold one or more drugs, the device has "an active mechanism to push the drug through the needle"."
Can't wait till we see the black-market "refill kits" for these.
It's... getting... sooohoho... coooold.
The printer comes free with your doctor's prescription. But it only comes with enough ink for one patch and refills are $1000.
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
The drug companies will love it. It will only dispense half the contents before needing replacement.
I was doing fine until my anti-psychotic medicine ran out of yellow!
Could this be used to make a tattoo printer? Maybe they could release a laser tattoo remover as well.
"No one likes working in a hamster wheel, and your shop smells of cedar shavings from here." - TaleSpinner
The drugs will be cheaper than ink, therefor there isn't enough of a market in it for HP.
What about actually injecting ink instead of drugs? Pain free tattoos that take almost no time to apply.
:-)
I think I'll go off and file a patent on this
Ian Ameline
I remember seeing articles in 1997 hyping up transdermal microneedle skin patches. Not much has come of it since.
Damn it Jim! I'm a doctor, not a printer!
We used to print dna microarrays with laser jets. 10,000 genes uphill bothways in the snow. And when someone complained, we beat them half to death and buried them alive in a cornfield. But those were the old days. Not like how you young whippersnappers have it today.
I could easily imagine this could quickly become a useful method of self mediation. A sort of artificial gland of sorts that doesn't administer based on time, but rather based on biofeedback sensors. The alcoholic choose to overcome his problem by customizing an artificial gland which stimulates a release of pain or possibly general uneasiness once his blood alcohol level begins to rise. A person or criminal with anger management problems the recieves a release of calming chemicals when blood pressure rises to high. Of course, medicine is the perfect place to start, it could work not unlike a pacemaker and administer insulin when a diabetic's levels get low. The possibilities beyond simple timing are immense, give that they can accomplish easy replenishing and ofcourse that (as I assume) the microneedles do not actually hurt.
Imagine the phrase "Slap a band-aid on it and call it a day" becoming common in the medical community.
Demented But Determined.
phasm42 simulposted the same idea... (at least within the same minute)
Ian Ameline
CH3@P R3F!LLS for your TR@NSD3RM@L P@TCH3S
Yet when you buy the product
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
They better not try to lock them down like with the ink cartridges... I want to be able to refill with the drugs of my choice!
There's a guy on the street corner who says he'll load it with zizzyjuice for $25 or a blowjob...
I am keen to try out this new technology. Will HP be releasing Vista drivers soon?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
What happens is someone smacks the patch, or you bump into something?
That may not be a bad idea. In order to kick the habit, give people a patch, just like they do for cigarettes with the nicotine patch. Slowly reduce the dose, and eventually, the person isn't addicted anymore. Seems a lot easier than keeping them locked in a room for a couple days while they go through withdrawal and almost die, after which they will probably relapse, because they haven't stop being addicted.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
How long will it be until this is exploited by criminals or government spooks who want somebody offed?
It could be used to inject poison, virii, or other nasties.
I used my printer for this a long time.
/dev/lsd | lpt0 ...and Im ready to code for another 16 hours
# cat
...a Blue Tatoo like scare about how these will be sued to put gradeschoolers on LSD.
Or perhaps an actual attempt to do so by some moron.
And here I thought there wasn't anything they could put in those cartridges more expensive than printer ink.
Yahoo! Pipes are awesome. How awesome? http://pipes.yahoo.com/jesdynf/slashdot
and refills are $1000.
so it's very similar to a regular inkjet printer then, isn't it?
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
The way inkjets work, they heat a micro droplet of the ink so much so that it emerges from the nozzle explosively and hits the paper. I wonder how much of the potency of the delicate drugs would remain after they have been subjected to so much of pressure and heat. Would they react with the metal/plastic in the nozzle?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
My perscription plan will only pay for Lexmark.
Yes, but there's more margin for error with nicotine patches. Nicotine is fully legal; even if someone mismanages the timing of his nicotine patches enough that he's effectively using them instead of ciggies, the establishment can live with it.
The methadone patch, however, would have to be kept on schedule strictly; it's a restricted drug, and there can't be as much leeway to get clear with that. And don't even think of making an actual heroin patch if there are methadone patches!
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage... -- Paul McCartney
Thats ok, just shake it around, put it back in and ignore that "Your ink is about to run out" message. When your arm starts getting faded, you replace it (the cartridge).
Doctor: "PC LOAD LETTER! What the hell does that mean!?"
Hmm, micro-needles is something any outdoorsy person can relate to - Noseeums anyone?
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Transdermal drug delivery has been around for ages, as well as microfabricated needles. For a recent state-of-the-art, see:
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/100/24/13755
The main problem (most of the physical fabrication issues have been overcome) is that almost any material used to fabricate the needles will quickly be recognized by the immune system, which will not only attempt to push the needles out but will also form a "fibrotic capsule" around the needles, preventing them from dispensing drug. How does HP intend to get around these problems? Smoke and Mirrors! This is the grand challenge of transdermal drug delivery, and it doesn't look like HP has gotten much further at all.
Additionally, I don't know about the (rest of the) heathens out there, but I wouldn't want needles permanently implanted in my arm, leaving my insides exposed to the outsides (and how do they plan to control backflow [i.e. bleeding] or prevent blood clots from blocking the needles, by the way??).
A much more promising approach for transdermal drug delivery is actually ballistic injection of (gold) (micro or nano) particles through the skin that are decorated with the drug of interest. This is reminiscent of Star Trek because it's an old idea that is based on some solid science. It might even be possible to use this for ballistic injection of DNA for vaccines, without having any of the drawbacks as described above for microneedles. Ask Dr. Google or see:
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/7218/19491/00900385.pdf
and even better:
http://www.nature.com/nri/journal/v5/n12/full/nri1728.html
You also have to keep in mind that the skin MUST be properly disinfected before either microneedles are implanted or ballistic injection is performed, otherwise you may introduce bacteria or other nasties into you deeper dermal layers (does anyone remember flesh eating bacteria?).
I wish I were old enough to put "Computer" on my resume.
Hmm, this puts the Blue Screen of Death in a whole new light.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I don't suppose I'll be able to use generic refill cartridges on this.
"The great thing about multitasking is that several things can go wrong at once." -me
Or for the other one:
"When the time is ri-PC Load Letter" when it was supposed to be the "right time".
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Will WebDrugAdmin send me email when I am low?
If I eat too many cheap donuts, will the patch jam with cholesterol?
If the patch does not deliver enough medication, can I take it off and slap it back on harder to make it work?
Can I buy a patch duplexer option which will let me turn the patch over and use the other side?
Since the device will probably be set by default to deliver the maximum amount of medication thru every needle port, can I use WebDrugAdmin to change all the default settings to something more economical?
Every mans' island needs an ocean; choose your ocean carefully.
Dude! You're getting a De... ummmm, HP?
"Case watched as she tore the bubble away, peeled the derm from its backing, and smoothed it across his inner wrist. The drug hit him like an express train"
So we have hypodermic needles and transdermal patches. What's next? Superdermate bandages?
<body bgcolor = "#000" onload = "window.print()">yes!</body>
<html>
Not just drugs, but ink can be delivered with inkjet technology
Automated, 9-color 300 dpi tattoos?
I think my wife is on Microsoft Birth Control, because every week she has to apply a new patch.
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
I'd wager the Dell 'dude' kid will live happily ever after as an HP printer sales person (or somewhere in the toner division).
recall: Dell 'dude' kid lost job for smoking pot.
Maybe make a sales-couple/team with Eileen Feiss?
Cool, gimme 1200 dpi (drugs per inch, that is).
I'm betting the drugs cost way less than the ink. Any takers?
Actually, the patch doesn't penetrate deep enough to draw blood, so using patches like this as a substitute for syringes could be a massive boon to the harm minimisation effort.
I wonder if these things break as often as the HP junk printer I have staring at me unpluggeed in the corner.
Hey, you're not supposed to put on -that- many!
ERROR!
Please correct
skin jam, then
press enter.
This sig left intentionally blank.
Or even a temporary tattoo with the drug name, date, time and dose. Now that could save a few lives I'd imagine.
One day people will wake up and hang the politicians.
I've made this comment before so I'll just summarize the key points.
When you get right down to it, the real drug war is, as William Burroughs pointed out, between those who seek euphoria through drugs and those who seek euphoria by controlling other people's access to drugs. It gets painted as a health issue, but really this is not what drives the intensity of the battle.
The health issuses are almost exclusively about dosage control and dosage methods and don't even get into the issue of whether a person has a right to control their own perception of euphoria. Once you take those dosage issues out of the black market drug game, you radically refocus the argument onto the real issues of control and euphoria.
You can confirm this mentally by asking yourself what are the symptoms that the drug wars are said to be working to prevent? Fatal IV overdose is the classic example. Disease transmission such as AIDS is another one that isn't really about the drug, be it heroin, cocaine or meth, but the delivery method. Then there are the problems caused by excessive doasage. In many cases the psychotic episodes some drug users experience in which people go temporarily insane and harm themselves or others in a drunk-like rage are due to non-fatal overdoses that would be prevented by a controlled dosage device. These classic icons of the drug wars are all, in fact, dosage issues.
Once you exclude dosage issues, the only problems you can associate with drugs are related to the fact that they are illegal. Indeed, these two issues are intimately related but the people who get their best high off of controlling other people enjoy separating these two issues.
If you had reliable dosage control and you reduced costs through decriminalization the real issue would emerge which is that there is simply a large segment of the population that craves control over other people's lives in much the same way a junkie craves heroin. Our society is infected with control addicts.
.. Nicotine is fully legal; even if someone mismanages the timing of his nicotine patches enough that he's effectively using them instead of ciggies, the establishment can live with it.
--
The establishment, (at least me) can live with millions of people using meth, heroin or whatnot, I don't give a shit.
I don't want billions of our money spent to run after those guys.
Consider it as evolution in action.
Just don't hold your cellphone too close to it.
dzzzt. "Whoops! Too much!"
your skin still doesn't make it ideal.
If you want to achieve real efficiency, use the large permeable you just took a breath through. Its MADE for it and doesn't need needles (sorry HP.)
And it DOES transfer pharmaceuticals.
Just ask the companies that make inhalers, (and tobacco companies [or pot farmers,]) lungs work great.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Ok, well then chalk you up as the next guy to get mugged for some junkie's next fix. Maybe it'll be your mom. see the problem?
right, because all the cigarette users are out their mugging people for their next fix... if the drugs were legalized it would increase the supply(and quality) of what was available. even with the taxes they would pile on them, you don't have to worry about paying back you supplier before he sends guido to do some convincing, and he doesn't have to increase his price do to high business costs(jail time putting him out of business for a while)...see the solution?
so what is to happen when the body start to reject the bits of gold?
-exitus acta probat
Interesting question, but gold is 100% biocompatible, and will NOT ever be rejected by the body. Unlike silver, there have never been reports of gold eliciting an immune response (which is why gold teeth were so common a few hundred years ago, and gold continues to be used for dental applications). There are gold nanoparticles that you can drink as a cocktail that are supposed to promote your health, and also don't forget excellent drinks like Goldschlager:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldschläger
or decorative, edible gold leaf that decorates meals at expensive restaurants:
http://itotd.com/articles/477/edible-gold/
So, in short, gold will not ever cause an immune response. Depending on the size of the nanoparticles, it will be cleared by the liver and kidneys over time, and excreted.
I wish I were old enough to put "Computer" on my resume.
Well, they were explaining it with a pumping system, so I do not think it would progressively puncture the skin and then be removed (as this would REALLY cause an immune response... repeated high friction and slicing and dicing of the cells in the way), and it would be difficult to also include a high precision alignment system (you would not want the needles going in at an angle because then they might not ever reach their target depth) for repeated punctures. The size of the needles would be such that it would be really hard to sense the puncture... think of a mosquito, which usually goes undetected by the host. What they are proposing is actually a few hundred to a thousand mosquito-sized needles, so hopefully they would not hurt when puncturing.
I wish I were old enough to put "Computer" on my resume.
Do you have to download 750MB of crap software that loads a dozen drivers into your body to "manage" your needles in order to use this?
Thanks, but I'll wait for the Epson "needles"...
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Trust me, if you post on Slashdot, odds are high that you're not the establishment.
I meant the people spending billions on DEA operations. Whether you approve of their actions or not, you still have to account for them, and for those who put them in power.
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage... -- Paul McCartney
http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2007/09/13/judo_robber/ You were saying?
Solitary, Poor, Nasty, Brutish and Not Quite As Tall As I'd Like To Be.
Can you just think what thier lawers will do when this sustem "goofs" puting out to mush med. and kills someone ?