Getting a shot, a vaccination or something that your doctor uses a needle to give you can hurt. But does it have to hurt? Maybe not according to scientists in Australia. For a few years now they have been working on something they call the nanopatch. It has a lot of very small projections (like needles) that help to deliver the vaccine to a special group of cells that helps you develop immunity. These tiny projections are coated with the vaccine and the patch is applied to your skin. So far they have tested it on mice but sometime in the near future they should be testing it on humans. It takes a lot of time for any kind of new medicine or device to be approved for use in humans. That is because there is a lot of safety testing that needs to happen and then proof that it really does work. It is sometimes frustrating because a great discovery in the lab takes a few years to make it into the clinic. Even nanotechnology can’t make that happen any faster.
http://tinyurl.com/nanopatch