This would effectively imprint a kind of invisible tattoo on people who receive vaccinations, identifing them as already inoculated. READ MORE: Invisible Ink Could Reveal whether Kids Have Been Vaccinated [Scientific American], More on vaccinations: Pro-Vaxxer Spots Own Photo at Vigil for Kids “Killed by Vaccines”. We’re 99.9% of the way there. After insertion into a person’s skin, the NIR QDs would then continuously emit a wavelength of light not visible to the human eye, but easily imaged by certain types of cameras.
pic.twitter.com/6ZoOaHwKaT, — Gates Foundation (@gatesfoundation) January 24, 2020. Feature image: Kevin McHugh / Rice University, Scientists Propose ‘Tattoos’ To Solve Vaccination Issues, Alpha will be closing on March 31. The pattern - and vaccine - gets delivered into the skin using hi-tech dissolvable microneedles made of a mixture of polymers and sugar. But tracking who’s received vaccinations and which ones remains a daunting task for medical professionals, especially when it comes to keeping tabs on children. Invisible Ink Could Reveal whether Kids Have Been Vaccinated The technology embeds immunization records into a child’s skin By Karen Weintraub on December 18, 2019 M.I.T. So far, the system is mostly a proof of concept. The researchers also found that the NIR QDs didn’t interfere with the efficacy of the vaccines they accompanied, and they can easily customize their injection patterns in order to label or distinguish between different types of vaccinations. Lee, who wasn’t involved in the research, told Smithsonian Magazine that this kind of record keeping could potentially lead to confusion, as the NIR QDs could be misapplied, or misread thanks to their fading over time.
In other words, they’ve found a covert way to embed the record of a vaccination directly in a patient’s skin rather than documenting it electronically or on paper — and their low-risk tracking system could greatly simplify the process of maintaining accurate vaccine records, especially on a larger scale. For the people overseeing nationwide vaccination initiatives in developing countries, keeping track of who had which vaccination and when can be a tough task. In human cadaver skin models, the patterns outlasted five years of simulated Sun exposure. So far, the system is mostly a proof of concept. I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its User Agreement and Privacy Policy, This COVID Vaccine Works For Both Young and Old, Scientists Say in Closed Meeting, Famous Doctor: COVID-19 Reinfection Rates Are Actually “Very Reassuring”. This method of injecting invisible tattoos along with immunizations could potentially address the challenge of keeping accurate vaccination records in poorer countries, where centralized medical databases are hard to create or maintain. "In areas where paper vaccination cards are often lost or do not exist at all, and electronic databases are unheard of, this technology could enable the rapid and anonymous detection of patient vaccination history to ensure that every child is vaccinated," researcher Kevin McHugh said in a statement. What do you think about this method of using invisible markers to keep track of who and who hasn’t been vaccinated? But researchers from MIT might have a solution: they’ve created an ink that can be safely embedded in the skin alongside the vaccine itself, and it’s only visible using a special smartphone camera app and filter. The invisible "tattoo" accompanying the vaccine is a pattern made up of minuscule quantum dots - tiny semiconducting crystals that reflect light - that glows under infrared light.