Resistance is futile?
Printer technology in skin patch may let tiny needles deliver drugs – sfgate.com: The same technology that Hewlett-Packard printers use to squirt ink soon could be administering drugs to patients through thousands of tiny needles embedded in a skin patch.
It uses micro-hypodermic needles controlled by a microprocessor to painlessly deliver drugs just below the surface of the skin. The tiny processor controls which drug is administered and when. That means it can be used for medications that are sensitive to timing, such as those used for the treatment of diabetes, cardiac disease or hormonal imbalances. It will be helpful particularly for patients who are on a multi-drug regimen and have trouble remembering which drugs to take when.
This is the type of creepy technology development that blows my mind and makes my skin crawl at the same time. It gives a whole new meaning to going to the drugstore to get your ‘refill’.
It is rather amazing where a product can lead a company and yet how the product almost never came to be.
The bubblejet or inkjet ink jet project almost came to an end many times.
It was against the very concepts of HPs corporate culture of engineers- an anathema that a project should be developed and yet the product after all that work be disposable – thrown away.
The project was almost ended not once , but many times.
And yet here we are – not only are ink jet cartridges , with their ink or paint so to speak , being the standard printer of our time , a major component of HP stable of products as well as company profit and now being introduced into another whole conceptual line of products
A nice development. There’s another development that’s somewhat creepy yet cool at the same time – an inkjet printer that can print nanotech:
http://tinyurl.com/2qgf4v
Not so creepy if you have to take over half a dozen medications. I already have a patch for one medication. This would be great if I could just apply a patch preloaded and set up to deliver each drug from a single patch at the right dose and right time.
I have found out the hard way that forgetting certain medications has very bad side effects when they wear off. I’ve had to have meds delivered to my office or go home and take them when I realized that I had forgotten.
These are all cardiac and, or blood pressure medications due to heart valve replacement in ’04.
You do realize that most drug patches employ tiny little micro needles to deliver the drug right? Your skin is a pretty good barrier, you have to get the drug through somehow..
This technology if anything will just make it safer, with the drug being delivered in a controlled and predictable manner….
Not to sound “anti-technology” here. But it’s really an issue of what drug is being despensed, for what purpose, and who decides it should be? I’d be more concerned about who gets to write the “skin patch” chip’s softwere. Microsoft?! Diebolt?!! The Pentagon?!!! Faint memories of a movie titled “Terminal Man” return to haunt.
This is old stuff. They had it on Star Trek in 1966.
OK, yes it’s true that the implementation had to wait for certain materials technology developments….