3D technology Archives - 3DHeals

Event Recap: Advancing 3D Surgical Planning

Peter Hsu — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 18:16:57 +0000

3DHeals - Discover 3D Bioprinting and Healthcare Innovations

To create and build in 3D is to understand our world with greater complexity and richness. Over the years, 3D printing and visualization have captivated us and the imaginations of innovators worldwide. We have seen many incredible applications of this technology, but what brings these discussions to life are the people creating and being impacted by these changes. At our latest 3DHEALS event on Advancing 3D Surgical Planning, one of the field’s biggest challenges is realizing the entire clinical workflow. At that level, integrating 3D technologies isn’t just about the tools and gadgets – it’s also about the people who work in and depend on the clinical system. In this recap article, we’ll take a look at the main lessons we learned from our five expert panelists on how to actually put 3D into practice.

Building with Human-Centered Design

As AI takes its turn as a flashy marketing tactic, it will be important for innovators to build software with the thoughtfulness and attention to detail needed to bring actual value to users. For Dr. Tim Van Cleynenbreugel, Co-Founder and CTO of Replasia, creating a software tool to work alongside the company’s 3D-printed titanium implant for hip dysplasia presented an opportunity to develop patient-specific products in a reproducible, scalable way.

The software, called HipStudio, enables users to conveniently perform anatomic measurements, perform simulations, and compare with healthy reference data. By designing software tools that support the creation and use of their 3D-printed implant, they can make this level of patient customization more accessible and easier for healthcare providers to adopt.

This type of software can ultimately help to lower the time, cost, and effort barriers that patient-specific devices typically present. However, they must be carefully designed with the human user in mind. What repetitive steps can the software perform, and when will the user want to manually intervene? What data should we show the user, and, importantly, what should be kept hidden to avoid information overload? How much responsibility should we place on users to catch errors, especially AI-generated ones?

While the 3D printing field is working to advance software integration into clinical workflows, addressing these critical questions distinguishes practical software from hype-driven, extraneous features.

Balancing Creativity and Reproducibility

Dr. Beatriz Dominguez Gonzalez, Global Market Manager for Materialise, recommends seeing beyond the print when figuring out how to turn 3D technologies into a routine, rather than a niche, practice. She suggests investing in a workflow that (1) selects the most complex cases that will provide significant and not just marginal benefits, (2) utilizes standardized segmentation protocols, and (3) ensures that 3D plans are aligned with the surgical schedule and not the other way around.

Incorporating 3D workflows into the clinical environment will require innovators to carefully consider design standardizations and constraints, without sacrificing the flexibility the technology promises. Not every hospital will have its own 3D expert with decades of experience, which means the restrictions we place on data quality, the sequence of steps, and the double-checks that must occur are integral parts of the product.

Innovation in this field will come from technologies that empower users to be creative and express their design ideas while simultaneously adhering to strict principles that prevent them from getting lost in the software’s complexity or from ending up with undesirable results.

Listening to an Ecosystem of People

For Dr. Mark Tan, a Radiologist and Clinical Lead of the Singapore General Hospital 3D Printing Centre, bringing people together is his craft. Dr. Tan describes the importance of creating diverse teams of engineers, radiographers, managers, and clinical leads to make the technology accessible to patients and providers.

He describes several challenges in implementing 3D technologies in clinical settings. For example, creating 3D models for surgical planning involves acquiring high-quality medical imaging scans and potentially combining imaging modalities to capture the relevant spatial and temporal details. It also means having someone with computer-aided design (CAD) expertise and a person with an understanding of different printing materials.

3D planning and printing affect an entire ecosystem of individuals within the healthcare system, and innovators must anticipate how their product will affect each one of these people. Listening to their needs and preferences is what ultimately shapes a product. The customer isn’t just the patient or the surgeon; it’s also all the individuals the product depends on to get it to the end user.

Rashi Gupta, a 3D Printing Engineer at SSM Health Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital, points out three major obstacles: (1) there can be a disconnect between doctors and engineers due to differences in terminology and knowledge, (2) sometimes people are unaware that the 3D lab exists, and (3) there is resistance to reimbursement for surgical planning since such plans aren’t physical products.

One way Gupta addresses these challenges is by knowing how to educate people on 3D technologies and bridging the language gap between different specialists. By taking the time to learn more about the clinical perspective as an engineer, she describes how she has a better understanding of how to bring people together around this technology and how we can better train future leaders in the field.

Innovators will need to consider how their product also requires an educational component to help stakeholders understand the device’s significance and how to use it. 3D technologies are rapidly expanding to a point where an interdisciplinary background is needed to understand the “3D mindset.” Translating innovation into a language that people from different fields can resonate with is part of the equation for user adoption.

Bringing Real Value to Clinicians

One of the major goals of Dr. David Pearlstone, CEO of DICOM Director, is to achieve a human digital twin that will allow clinicians, patients, and families to understand a person’s specific medical condition through computer simulations and visualizations. For Dr. Pearlstone, the predictive ability of such twins will enable greater insights and benefits, such as understanding how a tumor mass will grow over time.

While AI may play a significant role in the future of predictive digital twins, it will be up to humans to decide which predictions will be useful in clinical practice and which are just noise. Predictions may provide more information to the clinician, but many will shrug their shoulders as to what it means if there isn’t good evidence to back it up.

Dr. Pearlstone envisions a future in which digital twins improve clinicians’ practice of healthcare through predictive insights, and it will be important for 3D specialists to decide how those predictions fit into the overall clinical workflow.

Continue to Explore with Us

This event has shown us that while 3D technologies for surgical planning are here, their integration into the clinical workflow still has many unsolved hurdles. Through our expert panelists, we are beginning to understand what this integration might look like and the ways the field can actually fulfill the promises it makes. Continue to explore with us on this journey by registering for our live webinars and subscribing to our newsletter.

About the Author:

Peter Hsu

Peter Hsu is an editorial intern for 3DHEALS. He is currently an undergraduate at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and studies bioengineering with a focus on cell and tissue engineering. He is also minoring in computer science with interests in artificial intelligence and image processing. Peter conducts research on using computer vision methods to analyze human tissue images and improve the robustness of machine learning workflows. He is interested in the use of AI to assist tissue engineering and bioprinting research for medical applications. He is passionate about science communication and leads STEM outreach lessons at schools in the central Illinois area.

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Episode 114: Interview With Brigitte de Vet-Veithen, CEO of Materialise

Jenny Chen, M.D. — Mon, 11 May 2026 04:27:48 +0000

3DHeals - Discover 3D Bioprinting and Healthcare Innovations

This is our second episode recorded at the Materialise headquater during its 2026 “3D Planning and Printing in Hospitals Forum”. Brigitte de Vet-Veithen, CEO of Materialise, joins The Lattice Podcast for a candid conversation recorded live at Materialise’s Point of Care Forum in Belgium. With a career spanning Johnson & Johnson, multiple medtech turnarounds, and nearly a decade building Materialise’s medical segment, Brigitte brings a rare combination of clinical, commercial, and operational perspective to one of the most consequential questions in healthcare: what does it actually take to scale 3D printing from a niche capability into standard of care? The conversation covers the metrics that matter — from patient volume to structural reimbursement — and why health economics, not just clinical outcomes, now drives how Materialise selects new indications and applications. The episode goes deep on the practical barriers to adoption: physician workflow change, preoperative planning, and the unique challenge of running clinical trials for patient-specific devices where no two cases are alike. Brigitte also shares how Materialise evaluates acquisitions and partnerships globally, what the company’s recent moves into simulation technology signal about its long-term strategy, and why structural reimbursement — already achieved for patient-specific hip implants in Belgium — is the single metric she believes will define the next chapter of medical additive manufacturing.

⚠️ Disclaimer:
This podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. The views expressed do not constitute engineering, medical, or financial advice. The technologies and procedures discussed may not be commercially available or suitable for every case. Always consult with a qualified professional.

Guest Biography:

Brigitte de Vet is CEO at Materialise, a global leader in 3D printing software and services, since January
1st, 2024. She is also President of the Materialise Executive Committee. She succeeded Fried Vancraen,
who co-founded Materialise in 1990 and served as the company’s CEO for 33 years. Previously, Brigitte de Vet served as Executive Vice President of Materialise Medical, which develops software and 3D printing solutions that help improve patient outcomes. Under her leadership, the medical segment grew to become the company’s fastest-growing and most profitable business segment. She joined Materialise in 2016. Brigitte de Vet is an accomplished business leader with over 20 years of experience across multiple industries. Before joining Materialise Brigitte held various management, sales, R&D and marketing positions at Johnson & Johnson, ultimately serving as General Manager for Cordis in Germany and VP EMEA for Cordis Neurovascular. She led several companies through growth and transformation, including in her role as CEO of Acertys Group, where she drove a significant effort to improve operational efficiencies, strengthen the technology portfolio, and create growth. Brigitte holds an MBA from INSEAD and a BA with a major in Engineering from HEC Liege.

Episode Timestamps

00:00 Introduction
01:18 Setting the scene: Materialise Point of Care Forum, Belgium
01:53 Brigitte’s career journey: manufacturing, Johnson & Johnson, medtech turnarounds
03:38 Stepping into the CEO role at Materialise
04:37 Measuring adoption: the metrics that actually matter
05:13 Structural reimbursement as the clearest signal of adoption
07:22 How Materialise selects new indications: health economics first
09:21 The physician mindset shift: preoperative planning and workflow change
11:57 Two major company shifts: from implants to planning, from 3D printing to medical solutions
14:01 The future: predictive, personalized medicine using wearable data
15:29 Surgical robots vs. surgical guides: why they coexist
18:17 AI, SaaS, and the software layer in additive manufacturing
22:00 New frontiers: soft tissue, respiratory, and cardiovascular applications
27:31 Global markets: adoption gaps between US, Europe, Africa, and Latin America
29:35 Pediatric cardiology and the congenital heart opportunity
30:38 Materialise as a medical company: the JP Morgan moment
32:29 Three pillars of investment: education, evidence, and R&D
34:23 M&A strategy and the Pheops cardiac simulation acquisition
36:18 Life outside work: family, running, golf, and cold water swimming
39:08 Advice for the next generation: dare to be bold, stay close to the customer
40:19 What excites her most in 10 years: structural reimbursement at scale