The University of Michigan has received a grant from DARPA to develop a new morphine delivery mechanism, meant to be used on injured front-line soldiers before they receive help from the medics.
The ultimate goal is to develop tiny drug-bearing particles that a fellow soldier or perhaps the injured soldier himself could inject with a pen-like device, even in the heat of combat. That would solve one of the challenges now. Morphine, an effective painkiller that the military commonly uses for the acute pain of battle injuries, currently needs to be injected by skilled medical personnel and has to be monitored carefully to control its troublesome tendency to suppress normal breathing.
More details from Small Times…