MIT’s mobile vaccine printer: Disruptive innovation in the making

Faster distribution and easy availability to end-users have always been a key challenge for vaccine makers, given the need for massive cold storage products like #syringes and #needles along with trained healthcare professionals, which is also causing constriction issues in shipping to remote areas.

MIT researchers are working on developing a robotic arm-equipped mobile vaccine printer that would someday produce vaccine doses at a massive scale and deploy them on demand. The printer produces patches with several microneedles containing the vaccine.  

• The patch is attached to the skin, which helps the vaccine dissolve without the use of a conventional injection
• The motivation underlying this innovation in the making was the resolve to build a device capable of quickly producing and deploying vaccines to control sudden outbreaks of contagious diseases
• Although the #MITstudy is currently focused on Covid-19 RNA vaccines, the researchers plan to incorporate other vaccines going forward, including those made from proteins or inactivated viruses

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