"News this summer of a flu vaccine patch sparked a lot of chatter. Could getting vaccinated be as easy as putting on a bandage Could there be fewer or at least smaller needles in our future Some companies and academic labs are working to make those things happen. Theyre refining technologies that involve tiny needles less than a millimeter long and needlefree injectors that can send a dose of vaccine through your skin in a fraction of a second. Some of these technologies are already available on the market while others are still being tested. One hundred very tiny needles A flu vaccine patch is not yet available to the public. But one version developed by Georgia Techs Laboratory for Drug Delivery httpdrugdelivery.chbe.gatech.eduindex.html showed promising results in its first human clinical trial according to a study published http in The Lancet in June. The patch about the size of a small square bandage has tiny dissolvable needles filled with a dose of flu vaccine. Its placed on the arm and activated through pressure. The microneedles dissolve into the skin releasing the vaccine. Article continues after this message from our sponsor In the study  participants received either the flu vaccine patch a standard flu shot or a placebo via a patch. Six months later no one involved in the study had gotten the flu. People in the microneedle patch groups reported some redness itching and tenderness but no serious side effects. People who received the flu patch had comparable immune responses to people who had gotten the flu shot. About  percent of the patients in the study preferred the patch to the regular shot says Yasmine Gomaa the labs associate director. Now Gomaas lab is looking beyond the flu vaccine. She says the microneedle patch could be particularly helpful in developing countries because it uses a form of vaccines that doesnt need to be kept as cold as regular vaccines. It can be stored at temperatures as high as  degrees Fahrenheit for up to a year she says.  The microneedles attached to this patch dissolve after being pressed into skin releasing a dose of vaccine. Each microneedle is less than a millimeter in length.  Courtesy of Georgia Institute of Technology  And the patch can be administered by people who arent trained health professionals. A number of the people in the flu patch study applied it to themselves. In  Georgia Tech and the pharmaceutical company Micron Biomedical won . million http in grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to develop a patch for polio immunization. Gomaas hope is that vaccine patches will cost less than vaccinations do now. A  study https from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that the use of vaccine patches could save on cooling costs and could cut down on waste. Its analysis concluded that a dose of measles vaccine with the patch would cost just under  while a typical shot would cost .. But that didnt take into account the costs of getting the patch to market. The potential cost savings wouldnt happen until the patches were in routine use the CDC noted. A twist on Star Trek technology  Others in the vaccinedelivery business are taking a different approach using a new twist on a needlefree device called a jet injector that has been around for more than half a century. Star Trek featured such a device calling it a hypospray. Portal Instruments a company that is developing jet injectors uses technology based on work done by Ian Hunter http at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Initially we worked on microneedles says the companys CEO Patrick Anquetil https And then Ian realized that why dont we just remove the needle altogether And thats how this project came to be. Needlefree jet injectors were actually used in the s https in mass smallpox vaccination campaigns. As described by the CDC these devices use a highpressure narrow stream of fluid to penetrate the skin. The diameter of the stream is comparable to a mosquito bite. The devices were used to quickly vaccinate large numbers of people including members of the armed forces. Anquetil notes that the older devices sometimes made patients feel as if they had been punched. To create the jet you have to instantaneously create  times more pressure than youve got in the tire of a car he says. Patients actually hated them because they were more painful than a needle and syringe. Others echo that sentiment. My yearold neighbor still remembers how painful it was says Ron Lowy httppharmajet.comaboutus CEO of PharmaJet a company that makes an FDAapproved https jet injector that administers a flu vaccine. The older devices had another problem. They used the same nozzle for multiple injections leading to concerns about the transmission of bloodborne pathogens between patients. Todays devices have made a lot of progress Lowy says. Now the syringe is changed for each patient and the injections are gentler. It feels like somebody snapped me with a rubber band he says adding that the injection happens too fast for some patients to register any sensation at all. It lasts about onetenth of a second. He says hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. have already received the flu vaccine via one of PharmaJets injectors. If you have your choice you want to get poked with a needle or you want to try this Most of the people say Yeah Ill try that  he says. Cost remains an issue for some jet injectors. Portal is aiming to get its cost down to  or  per injection.  In vaccines whats really hard is that theres a very very high volume and youre competing with a needle and syringe which is tremendously low cost Anquetil says. PharmaJet says the ability to give precise doses helps to save money. The company says its flu vaccine starter kit which can vaccinate  people costs . Nasal spray hits a roadblock FluMist an FDAapproved flu vaccine delivered through a nasal spray https was widely used in the U.S. and at one point was even the preferred method of vaccination for children. Then last year in a sharp turnaround the CDC recommended https that it not be used during the  flu season after a study found it had not been very effective in the previous year particularly among kids. The vaccines effectiveness https was just  percent so low that no protective benefit could be measured for children ages  to  the CDC said in a statement. In contrast the effectiveness of the flu shot was about  percent for kids in that age group. AstraZeneca the parent company behind FluMist says the CDCs data contradicts https data from several other studies which show the vaccine was about  percent effective during the same flu season. And the same vaccine continues to be recommended and used in European Union markets AstraZeneca says. In the U.S. the CDC continues to recommend against the nasal spray vaccine for the upcoming flu season. AstraZeneca hopes to reverse that decision before flu season begins. We continue to pursue a broadbased investigation to identify potential causes of lower effectiveness in recent years the company said in a statement adding that one of the four flu virus strains it used in the vaccine during the past two flu seasons may have been the problem. The company has chosen a new strain of live virus that is similar to other strains that have proven effective in studies and clinical trials."