Sure, Your Tattoo Is Cool, but This One Can Inject You With Drugs

The next frontier of personalized medicine and health care is a kissing cousin of that staple of commitment-phobe party life: the temporary tattoo. According to a study published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, a group of researchers say they’ve developed a prototype of a superthin electronic skin.

Rockers like Dave Navarro aren't sporting them—there's no tribal tattoo option (no hearts with daggers through them either)—but the invention features some seriously futuristic technology. Constructed of stretchy, synthetic nanomaterials that simulate the movement and feel of skin, the device can monitor muscle activity, store data, and even deliver a dose of medicine.

If that doesn’t sound amazing enough, try this on for size: The tiny adhesive patch is 4 centimeters (1.57 inches) long, 2 centimeters wide (.79 inches), and .3 millimeters thick (.01 inches)—slightly fatter than a sheet of paper.

The devices are a part of the rise of what's been dubbed the "human cloud" of personal data. Around 27 percent of Americans already wear a biometric device that tracks how active they are, according to USC professor Leslie Saxon, whose work has also centered on the creation of electronic skins. Saxon predicts a future in which patients can “manage symptoms and medication, food, and physical activity.”

The inclusion of a memory device makes this particular prototype the first of its kind. In its current form, however, the memory is only functional when the device is connected to a power supply and a data transmitter.

“It’s a pretty complicated system to integrate onto a piece of tattoo material,” study coauthor Nanshu Lu, a mechanical engineer at the University of Texas at Austin, told Nature. The researchers, who hope to use the skin to help patients with conditions such as Parkinson’s and epilepsy, plan to continue working to fix the portability challenges of the design.