Increasingly, there is a demand from not only the patients for that, but from the legislative environment in the States. Legislation has now been enacted in 17 states, which makes it mandatory to use methods other than a needle, if at all possible. Then there are the healthcare workers, the doctors and nurses who would administer the drugs. They want to get rid of the needles. The needles are dangerous because they cause the transmission of AIDS and hepatitis.
Needles are the biggest single cause of injury in hospitals in the Western world.
Finally, they want to get much of this administration outside the hospital. They do not want to have to do it and they would prefer that the drug be administered, at home, by the patient. For all these reasons, healthcare workers are desperate for delivery technologies that are easy to use, effective and eliminate the need for a needle. The prefilled Intraject does that. Our third constituency is the pharmaceutical company because there is a big opportunity for them to be able to differentiate their drug products.