MADICINE BY MICROMACHINE
ABSTRACT
The bedrock of modern medicine is an age-old technology: the pill. For the most part, it works. The drug inside the pill finds its way to whatever part of the body it's meant to treat, and the patient recovers.
But sometimes, oral medications just aren't effective. The medication may interact with other drugs or food. It may break down in the stomach before entering the bloodstream. Or, even more frightening, it may trigger other, bigger problems even as it aims to cure. Recall the painkiller Vioxx, which did wonders for arthritis patients but also raised the risk of heart attack and stroke. Or Baycol, a cholesterol-lowering medication that was linked to dozens of reports of fatal kidney failure. In one way or another, traditional oral medications fail hundreds of thousands of patients each year, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
For years, researchers have searched for better ways to deliver drugs. The ideal method would administer the right dose to the exact area being treated, whether it's an arthritic knee or a tumor in the lungs. From the patient's perspective, it would be both convenient and unobtrusive—as easy as, if not easier than, taking a pill.
The micromachine is a small device being developed at the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory at the Massachusetts EYE and Ear Infirmary in Boston. The main premise behind the development of this device is to create a device that is able to combine microelectromechanics with microfluidics in order to create a system that allows for precise and effective drug administration to the different parts of the body. The basic breakdown of the system would include flexible tubing, a pump and software to manage the
pumping action. The main purpose behind the development of this device is to create a system that will have a self-sufficient micropump and electronic circuit system that will allow for the pumping of precise amounts of drugs from a drug reservoir into the human body and target areas. The final goal for the design of this device is a device that is approximately the size of a single AA battery with a reservoir that will hold enough medication to last approximately one year. This device would work to primarily benefit the elderly and psychiatric patients who may not be capable of handling self administration of drugs. It may seem that the development of this device is unnecessary due to the ease with which
drugs can already be administered today however the effectiveness of the systems available today is seldom noted. When drugs are administered in pill form it is all too often that the human body itself sabotages the effectiveness of the drugs by treating them like foreign bodies. This means that higher doses are needed than is actually absorbed by the body. As a result a system where the drugs can be administered at close proximity with the blood stream would be very useful.
Thus far much of the work on this device has been focused on hearing loss as it is a prevalent problem that offers no cure. The type of hearing loss that is being attempted to be treated is sensorineural hearing loss. This occurs when the tiny hairs in the inner ear are damaged causing them to no longer be sound receptors. The treatments that are available for this type of hearing loss only allow for the amplification of sound however this harbors no hope for any time of regeneration of hearing. With the micromachine system there is hope of introducing the hairs to genetic material that would facilitate regrowth
and regeneration.

please send me the report and ppt