Wearable Drug Delivery Platforms

Abstract

Wearable drug delivery platforms -- body-worn devices that administer medications through transdermal microneedle arrays, iontophoretic patches, on-body injectors, and skin-adhesive micropumps -- bridge the gap between conventional oral/injectable dosing and fully implantable systems, offering programmable, needle-free or minimally invasive administration with patient mobility and real-time dosing adjustment. Despite rapid technological advancement, systematic comparison of wearable delivery architectures across clinically relevant performance dimensions remains absent. This study presents the Wearable Drug Delivery Assessment Framework (WDDAF), evaluating five platform architectures -- passive transdermal patches, active iontophoretic systems, dissolving microneedle arrays, wearable on-body injectors, and closed-loop wearable micropumps -- across four delivery performance tasks: dosing precision, pharmacokinetic predictability, wear compliance duration, and patient-reported usability. Our Wearable Delivery Performance Index (WDPI) integrates dosing accuracy, PK concordance, wear duration adequacy, usability score, and skin tolerability. Closed-loop wearable micropumps achieved the highest WDPI (0.920) through biosensor-coupled infusion algorithms that maintained therapeutic concentrations within target for 89% of the wear period, while dissolving microneedle arrays achieved the highest patient usability score (0.955) through painless, self-administered application requiring no sharps disposal and producing no biohazardous waste.