Vaccines can be delivered through the skin using ultrasound. This method doesn’t damage the skin and eliminates the need for painful needles. To create a needle-free vaccine, Darcy Dunn-Lawless at the University of Oxford and his colleagues mixed vaccine molecules with tiny, cup-shaped proteins. They then applied liquid mixture to the skin of mice and exposed it to ultrasound – like that used for sonograms – for about a minute and a half.
Sitting for a minute and a half, not including prep and cleanup, or just getting stabbed a little. shrug
Edit: To save the next half dozen people exclaiming "needles!" the trouble. I would refine my point to, "great to have the option but I imagine it as being more of a fallback than the beginning of a new era".
Maybe one way of looking at it might be : this would be safe enough you could trust people to self-administer, and you could therefore take the professional with the needle out of the equation.
90 seconds of one person's time has got to be better than the quick jab by two people, no?
Depending on how specific the injection needs to be, there are a number of scenarios in which people can self-administer injections. So, ignoring people who physically can't self-administer, it isn't that dramatic a change.
I can't help but feel that the professional would be even more necessary to administer this correctly and not just waste a treatment/dose doing it wrong, whilst under the illusion that you did it right. Along with the specialised equipment needed for it in the first place. Needles and doses at least are pretty easily self-contained and if it is suitable for self application just "pointy end goes in fat bit of you".
Naturally it's early days, so it'll be fascinating to see how this develops.
I agree! Auto injectors aren't cheap compared to ye olde trusty ampule and syringe, and this might push the costs towards the higher end again. I can see a kids-and-the-latex-allergic edge case scenario.
Can't wait to see what develops 😄