Robot injectors.<\/p>
(Let that sink in for a sec.)<\/p>
This is just one of the far-out—yet entirely feasible—concepts that wowed us while reporting<\/a> on the aesthetics industry’s most compelling in-the-pipeline technologies. While it will likely be years before we see AI-guided bots pushing needles in American doctors’ offices, carefully calibrated robotic arms engineered for this purpose are currently being developed by a French tech company (and preclinical studies are underway). The innovation “takes humans—and, I suppose, human error—out of injecting, but in doing so, it also takes the art out of injecting,” says Dr. Arisa Ortiz<\/a>, a board-certified dermatologic surgeon in San Diego. Still, the concept is “very sci-fi,” she notes, and undeniably fascinating. <\/p> In the U.S., the horizon is bright, with hyperprecise machines and injectables promising thicker hair, tighter skin, safer shots, and maybe even the next big thing in body contouring. While some of these innovations are still in the early stages of testing and tinkering, others are inching ever closer to FDA approval. Here are five high-tech tools poised to take over the (aesthetics) world.<\/p> Fillers<\/a>, like Restylane<\/a> and Juvéderm<\/a>, are commonly portrayed as a quick fix for deflated faces and wanting features—but experts intimately acquainted with the gels and their anatomical targets know there’s nothing casual about injecting into the vascular terrain of the human face. “When doing injectables, the big concerns are blindness and vascular occlusion<\/a>,” says Dr. Ortiz. If filler enters an artery, it can block blood flow to the skin, the retina, even the brain—a very rare but real risk doctors refer to as vascular compromise. While they do everything possible to prevent it, the potential for catastrophe always looms heavy.<\/p> Enter Blossom Innovations<\/a>. The Boston biotech company has developed the industry’s first smart needle (currently dubbed S3Inject), “which can detect when it’s inside an artery, and in real time, give feedback—it either lights up or sends an alert to your phone or watch, whatever it’s connected to—warning you not to inject, so that you can stop and reposition [the needle],” explains Dr. Ortiz. <\/p> Along with board-certified Boston dermatologist Dr. Mathew Avram<\/a>, Dr. Ortiz learned about the smart needle while cochairing the Shark Tank Aesthetic Innovations Forum at the IMCAS World Congress, a global aesthetics meeting held in Paris this past January. The smart needle won first prize, beating out 29 other game-changing hopefuls. “It could prevent serious adverse filler events, such as blindness and stroke,” notes Dr. Avram. While Blossom is still fine-tuning the tech, Dr. Ortiz expects the smart needle to “become standard of care” once available.<\/p> Dermatologists at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) may have discovered a way to one-up the fat-eradicating effects of CoolSculpting<\/a> (which was invented by the same MGH lab). Think of it as a slushy in a shot: “We’ve already learned that cooling at certain temperatures can cause fat destruction,” says Dr. Avram, who alerted us to the discovery. “The idea here is that by directly injecting fat with this formulation of glycerol and saline at a particular temperature, we can destroy fat locally, without harming the surrounding tissues.” <\/p>A smart needle aiming to prevent filler complications<\/h2>
A fat-freezing injectable for body contouring<\/h2>