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Researchers have developed painless tattoos that can be self-administered. Discovered at the Georgia Institute of Technology, the low-cost, painless, and bloodless tattoos have many applications from medical alerts to tracking neutered animals to cosmetics. Tattoos are used in medicine to cover up scars, guide repeated cancer radiation treatments, or restore nipples after breast surgery. Tattoos can also be used instead of bracelets as medical alerts to communicate serious medical conditions such as diabetes, epilepsy, or allergies. Microneedle patch tattoos are also known to be used to encode information in the skin of animals. Various cosmetic products using microneedles are already on the market, mostly for anti-aging but developing microneedle technology for tattoos is new. Tattoos typically use large needles to puncture repeatedly into the skin to get a good image, a time-consuming and painful process. The Georgia Tech team developed microneedles that are smaller than a grain of sand and are made of tattoo ink encased in a dissolvable matrix. The study showed that the tattoos could last for at least a year and are likely to be permanent which also makes them viable cosmetic options for people who want an aesthetic tattoo without risk of infection or the pain associated with traditional tattoos.