Storing medical information below the skin’s surface
Specialized invisible dye, delivered along with a vaccine, could enable “on-patient” storage of vaccination history to save lives in regions where paper or digital records aren’t available.
MIT researchers have now developed a novel way to record a patient’s vaccination history: storing the data in a pattern of dye, invisible to the naked eye, that is delivered under the skin at the same time as the vaccine.
By selectively loading microparticles into microneedles, the patches deliver a pattern in the skin that is invisible to the naked eye but can be scanned with a smartphone that has the infrared filter removed. The patch can be customized to imprint different patterns that correspond to the type of vaccine delivered.
“It’s possible someday that this ‘invisible’ approach could create new possibilities for data storage, biosensing, and vaccine applications that could improve how medical care is provided, particularly in the developing world,” Langer says.
The research was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Koch Institute