Plastics disposable syringes, predominantly from PP now have a new competitor. There is an increasing demand to develop needleless syringes to prevent injuries due to needles and thus achieve better safety.

This major market driver has led to several new developments of drug injection systems using engineering polymers like Polycarbonate, Acetal, Cyclic Olefins for the syringe body parts and teflon for the piston parts. The engineering polymers are preferred because of better strength and good sterlizability.

These new systems use either springs or compressed gas for direct injection of drugs at the required depth of human skin. The clear advantage of such a device, in addition to prevention of injury, is that it can be discarded after its usage, since it does not pose the problem of medical waste.

These new injection systems can have several variants. The prefilled drug delivery systems that has already been launched in Northern America would hasten the process of commercialization. Resuable injection systems also have been developed. Infact, many major pharmaceutical giants are likely to bring about these new syringe systems very soon. It is therefore quite likely that by 2010, these new needleless drug injection systems would have almost 70% of disposbale drug injection systems. Polycarbonate, the most preferred polymer in the present needleless syringes may have competition from several new engineering polymers like TOPAS (cycloaliphatic polymers).