Your own medical card: a method of vaccination with quantum dot tattoos has been proposed

Several years ago, scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology became concerned about the problems of vaccination in backward and developing countries. In such places, there is often no system of hospital registration of the population or it is random. Meanwhile, a number of vaccinations, especially in childhood, require strict adherence to the timing and periods of vaccine administration. How to preserve and, most importantly, recognize in time what and when vaccinations are needed for an individual organism? Especially if the organism accidentally fell into the hands of someone from an organization like Doctors Without Borders.

Scientists from MIT have developed vaccination technology with the simultaneous introduction of an encoded pattern of material with quantum dots under the skin. In the drawing you can enter data about the time of vaccination, about the vaccination itself, and even about the batch from which the medicine was taken. The “inscription” created is invisible to the eye, but can be read using a modified smartphone with a camera without an infrared filter. Copper-based quantum dots are excited in the near-infrared region and can be read from beneath the top layer of skin even five years after application (tested in laboratory conditions on human skin samples).

The method of applying the information design and simultaneously administering the vaccine involves using a vaccination patch rather than a syringe. The vaccine and dye are enclosed in a biocompatible and partially soluble material, a combination of sugar and polyvinyl acetate (PVA). This material is used to create 1,5 mm long needles that pierce the top layer of skin and then dissolve. The placement of the needles also carries information, since they inject dye with nanometer-level quantum dots (about 4 nm in diameter) under the skin in a given order. Experiments on live rats have shown that vaccination with this method gives the same effect as vaccination with a syringe.

At least 1,5 million people die every year from lack of vaccines or vaccination. If the new method of vaccination with a medical record in the patient's skin becomes feasible, it will help save many lives.

Source: 3dnews.ru