Right, no one is really a fan of getting jabbed in the arm by a big needle, and it seems that the days of the vaccine injection might be numbered.
Vaxxas is a company based in Australia who might just have made all our lives a whole lot more pleasant. Whether you're afraid of needles or not, it's never a nice experience having one jabbed in your arm, so they've decided to use nanotechnology to make that process a bit less painful.
Pic via Vaxxas
The Nanopatch uses thousands of small pins to get the vaccine in to the skin, and is about the size of an adult thumbnail. To get vaccinated you simply apply the patch, leave it on for a minute or two and it's all done. They expect that the sensation will be akin to a flick with your finger rather than that of a needle, CEO David Hoey told Mashable.
There are plenty of benefits to it that go beyond being much less painful, including getting the vaccine directly to the immune cells that need it most, as well as being more cost-effective, but it's going to be a while yet before they actually arrive on the market. They're currently working with the World Health Organisation on the project (using the polio vaccine) and expect to run clinical trials in 2015/16 before it replaces the traditional needle, so if you're headed off to a place where you need a jab, maybe just postpone that for the next four years...
Via Mashable. Main pic via Steven Depolo/Flickr