Mainly designed and realized as a painless alternative to the hypodermic syringe, microneedle-based devices are currently approaching commercial market placement. The considerable academic and industrial investment in this technology is reflected by a multitude of papers published and patents registered every year, which is also a sign of a field in full fermentation. New materials and innovative methodologies are continuously exploited in search of the best performance at the lowest cost. For these reasons, an updated review, focused predominantly on the last year of scientific production, is a useful guideline in this rapidly changing panorama. This report provides a critical review of microneedle technologies presented in the very recent literature with a particular focus on those closest to the needs of the healthcare field. Although a few devices are already commercial, further effort is still needed to achieve complete clinical translation and therapeutic efficacy competitive with or superior to those of the devices used as standards and adopted by national health systems.

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Microneedle devices could play the role of a painless door to the human body. These devices enable high performance in both drug delivery and diagnostic analysis. While there has been a strong effort by the healthcare industry and applied research laboratories, the microneedles platform has not yet reached commercial success in the global market. In this competitive frame, the simplest fabrication processes and the best performing products will rise to the top of the market. In article number 1900036, Luca De Stefano and co‐workers review recent advances in this field.

Polymeric materials have found increasing use in biomedical applications in the last decades. Among them, hydrogels represent the chosen class of materials to use in this field, in particular as wound dressings. They are generally non-toxic, biocompatible, and biodegradable, and they can absorb large amounts of exudates. Moreover, hydrogels actively contribute to skin repair promoting fibroblast proliferation and keratinocyte migration, allowing oxygen to permeate, and protecting wounds from microbial invasion. As wound dressing, stimuli-responsive systems are particularly advantageous since they can be active only in response to specific environmental stimuli (such as pH, light, ROS concentration, temperature, and glucose level). In this review, we briefly resume the human skin’s structure and functions, as well as the wound healing phases; then, we present recent advances in stimuli-responsive hydrogels-based wound dressings. Lastly, we provide a bibliometric analysis of knowledge produced in the field.

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