HP's Inkjet Technology Used to Administer Drugs 113
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 (Score:5, Funny)
It's... getting... sooohoho... coooold.
Vista drivers??? (Score:2, Troll)
Blue screen (Score:3, Funny)
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http://hpoj.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
Yes they are made by HP and are fully featured including scanning and network support.
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http://hplip.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net] is the new drivers.
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Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhvOja6QfkA [youtube.com]
And there I was all worried about RFID chip implants.
Toner Refills (Score:5, Funny)
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It's just like what we have now (Score:2, Funny)
so it's very similar to a regular inkjet printer then, isn't it?
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</sarcasm>
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And every time you clean the printer heads, you get a drug overdose.
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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!
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One day people will wake up and hang the politicians.
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--
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.
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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.
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Indeed, it's the end of the drug wars. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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The second part of that statement is absurd. It describes Dr. Frankenstein not health practitioners. I seems to reason that William Burroughs was on drugs when he theorized he was being victimized by the health care community.
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People don't control their perception of euphoria, their perception of euphoria controls them.
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(lame)
But only in Soviet Russia!
(/lame)
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HP's Inkjet Technology Used to Administer Drugs (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: HP's Inkjet Technology Used to Administer Drug (Score:1)
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Damn! Out of Yellow! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Damn! Out of Yellow! (Score:4, Funny)
You're lucky. My anti-depressant patch is out of everything except blue.
Tattoos? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Laserjet (Score:2)
Drugs will be cheaper than ink... (Score:4, Funny)
Tattoos (Score:2)
I think I'll go off and file a patent on this
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It's 1997 all over again (Score:3, Interesting)
I predict... (Score:2)
Or perhaps an actual attempt to do so by some moron.
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Obligatory ST:TOS reference (Score:5, Funny)
Back in my day (Score:1, Offtopic)
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"When the time is ri-PC Load Letter" when it was supposed to be the "right time".
Artificial Gland (Score:5, Interesting)
Imagine the phrase "Slap a band-aid on it and call it a day" becoming common in the medical community.
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A person or criminal with anger management problems the recieves a release of calming chemicals when blood pressure rises to high.
Be careful, you just might end up with either:
A) People who purposefully work their blood pressure up to get a calming jolt
B) People who learn to be angry without any physiological manifestations (aka sociopaths)
I recall reading an article discussing a study of criminals who had gone through anger management. Their conclusion was that the only thing some criminals learned was how to mask their anger from others until it was too late.
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What will be scary is if this product makes it into the toilet paper business. Talk about the inkjet business going to shit, the shitter and disappearing into a heap of shit.
We'll REALLy wipe out the TP supply, I suppose...
(HEHEHE, captcha: "angling", but I saw "dangling" and dingle*y)
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Is a criminal not a person then?
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Yet More SPAM (Score:3, Funny)
CH3@P R3F!LLS for your TR@NSD3RM@L P@TCH3S
Yet when you buy the product
No DRM! (Score:3, Interesting)
There's a guy on the street corner who says he'll load it with zizzyjuice for $25 or a blowjob...
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accidents? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Well, it's just an array of microscopically short needles. If they push hard, the substrate pushes against your skin, and nothing happens. If they shove laterally, a few of the needles might nudge around in your skin. Worst case, you lose a few micrometers of dead skin.
If you're worried about the wells rupturing, such an event would probably mean the excess drug ends up on your skin. This may or may not be harmless. However, if the drugs could be effective that way, why use needles at all?
I doubt such r
Tinfoil hat comment (Score:1)
It could be used to inject poison, virii, or other nasties.
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Prior art (Score:1)
# cat
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"Dude, what char major, minor numbers are you using for /dev/lsd??!?!"
D'uh! Its an imaginary numnber - rotate your printer 90 degrees from this universe and try again.
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I can tell you, after a blotter, not only you won't be able to code; if you are not used to it, you will be begging for a trip sitter.
To get you running another 16 hours, a cocaine hit will be the best, but sniffing is nicer, simpler, and less dangerous than needles anyway, so no need to bother.
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Cocaine will require several refills to get you going 16 hours.
Inkjet tech, huh? (Score:2)
inkjets heat the fluid (Score:4, Interesting)
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I'm screwed! (Score:1)
I walk into my doctors office to get a shot. (Score:1)
A mosquito patch... (Score:2)
The material is the key... but it will still fail. (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/100/24/13755 [pnas.org]
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 [ieee.org]
and even better:
http://www.nature.com/nri/journal/v5/n12/full/nri1728.html [nature.com]
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?).
Re:The material is the key... but it will still fa (Score:1)
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldschl [wikipedia.org]äger
or
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refills (Score:2)
Usage monitoring (Score:1)
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 m
Dude!!! (Score:2)
Sounds like Neuromancer (Score:1)
Hypodermic, transdermal... (Score:1)
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whizzzzzzzzzzzz SMAK!
Puts Dr. McCoy's sneaky hypospray to shame!
Drug Addict DHTML (Score:2)
<body bgcolor = "#000" onload = "window.print()">yes!</body>
<html>
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Plus it has prospects in the Tattoo industry (Score:1)
Automated, 9-color 300 dpi tattoos?
Transdermal drugs... (Score:5, Funny)
Dude I'm getting an HP?!! (Score:2)
recall: Dell 'dude' kid lost job for smoking pot.
Maybe make a sales-couple/team with Eileen Feiss?
Inkjet drugs? (Score:2)
Sweet (Score:3, Funny)
Watch out (Score:1)
Ouch! (Score:2, Funny)
Please correct
skin jam, then
press enter.
Milton the Monster (Score:1)
dzzzt. "Whoops! Too much!"
Greater efficiency at punching holes through (Score:2)
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.
Question about this (Score:2)
Thanks, but I'll wait for the Epson "needles"...