Winners: Innovation Excellence in Research
Sponsored by 3M
This award celebrates those that have completed a research project that has excellent commercialisation potential and impact.
Liquid drugs can be injected through the skin without the use of needles using the principle of jet injection. Jet injectors create a hair-thin jet of fluid that impacts the skin surface at 200 m/s and can penetrate through skin and tissue to a depth of 20 mm. The MIT and ABI Bioinstrumentation Labs have developed the world’s first jet injectors that are actuated by highly-controllable, quiet, and reversible linear Lorentz-force motors. We tightly control the motion of the motor throughout the entire process of injection. This approach allows us unprecedented control over the precision of jet drug delivery.
Delivered volume and jet speed are electronically selected by the user, and can be varied during delivery. Our device can deliver the ampoule contents in a single injection or many smaller injections.
Our work has been published in Medical Engineering & Physics and Journal of Medical Devices and reported on by MIT News, The Economist, New Scientist, Popular Science, The Washington Post, Time, NPR, BBC, New Zealand Herald, and Television New Zealand, and many other websites and periodicals. MIT News has also released a Youtube video highlighting our work.
The ABI Bioinstrumentation Lab is now developing new versions of this device for viscous drug compounds. The MIT Bioinstrumentation Lab is developing devices for delivering drugs to the retina, for withdrawing fluid from the injection site, and for delivery of fluidised powdered drugs.
The needle-free jet injector has won the following awards:
Sponsored by 3M
This award celebrates those that have completed a research project that has excellent commercialisation potential and impact.
Sponsored by the NZ Innovation Council
The New Zealand Innovator Awards aim to celebrate and recognise innovative high growth New Zealand organisations and put them on a national stage to celebrate innovation and commercialisation.
The NZ Innovation Council is a private organisation with a social purpose – to help businesses to innovate and grow. It co-founded the New Zealand Innovators Awards in 2011 with Bayer NZ, Idealog and Ideas Accelerator.
More information on the awards can be found at www.innovators.org.nz.
Listen to Andrew Taberner, Bryan Ruddy, and Rhys Williams talk about the ABI/MIT needle-free jet injection on Radio New Zealand's 'Our changing world' programme.
Helen (Xinxin) Li
ME student
Email: xli230@aucklanduni.ac.nz
Phone: +64 9 923 7013
Fatima Abdali
ME student
Email: fabd028@aucklanduni.ac.nz
Phone: +64 9 923 7013
from the BioInstrumentation Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology:
Professor Ian Hunter
Email: ihunter@mit.edu
Phone: +1 617 253 3921
Dr Cathy Hogan