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

Relevant Links

TCT Additive Insight Podcast #223 — Additive Manufacturing Is Still a Revolution (Apr 2025): https://www.tctmagazine.com/3d-printing-resource-center/podcast/223-materialise-ceo-brigitte-de-vet-veithen-additive-manufacturing-revolution

SME Advanced Manufacturing — Additive’s Next Chapter: From Hype to Impact (Jul 2025): https://www.advancedmanufacturing.org/leadership-innovation/executive-perspectives/additive-s-next-chapter-from-hype-to-impact/article_9ae910b9-9bd9-4fb1-a460-f44864d995c1.html

3D Printing Industry Interview — The Future of 3D Printing at Materialise (Apr 2025): https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/interview-brigitte-de-vet-veithen-on-the-future-of-3d-printing-at-materialise-239160/

VoxelMatters — Materialise CEO 2026 Outlook (Dec 2025): https://www.voxelmatters.com/learn-about-the-materialise-2026-outlook-from-ceo-brigitte-de-vet/

Materialise 2026 3D Printing Trends Video: https://www.materialise.com/en/inspiration/videos/3d-printing-trends-2026

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The post Episode 114: Interview With Brigitte de Vet-Veithen, CEO of Materialise appeared first on 3DHeals.

In this issue of “From Academia”, we include three recent publications focusing on medical 3D printing for surgical planning, either using 3D printed anatomical models or surgical guides. The first is a review article focusing on cost/benefit analysis of using 3D printing in orthopedic and maxillofacial surgery, primarily in terms of operating room time saved. This is very relevant to our guide focusing on 3D printing in hospitals. The second study focuses on a case study using an innovative patient-specific instrument guide (PSIG) for the safe removal of a skull bone tumor. The final article introduces a 2-in-1 patient-specific 3D printed laminectomy surgical guide with integrated pedial screw drill guides.

“From Academia” features recent, relevant, close to commercialization academic publications. Subjects include but not limited to healthcare 3D printing, 3D bioprinting, and related emerging technologies.

Email: Rance Tino (tino.rance@gmail.com) if you want to share relevant academic publications with us.

Medical 3D Printing Cost-Savings in Orthopedic and Maxillofacial Surgery: Cost Analysis of Operating Room Time Saved with 3D Printed Anatomic Models and Surgical Guides

Authored by David H. Ballard, Patrick Mills, Richard Duszak Jr., Jeffery A. Weisman, Frank J. Rybicki, Pamela K. Woodward. Academic Radiology. August 2020

Printing a patient-specific instrument guide for skull osteoma management

Authored by Tien-Hsiang Wang, Li-Ying Huang, Yu-Cheng Hung, Te-Han Wang, Wen-Chan, Fang-Yau Chiu, Shyh-Jen Wang, Wei-Ming Chen. Journal of the Chinese Medical Association, October 2020

The Development of Novel 2-in-1 Patient-Specific, 3D-Printed Laminectomy Guides with Integrated Pedicle Screw Drill Guides

Authored by Andrew Kanawati, Renan Jose Rodrigues Fernandes, Aaron Gee, Jennifer Urquhart, Fawaz Siddiqi, Kevin Gurr, Christopher S. Baley, Parham Rasoulinejad. World Neurosurgery. February 1 2021

Related Articles:

3D Bioprinting for Bone Regeneration

From Academia: 3D Printing for Neurosurgery Training, Vat Photopolymerization, soft robotic microsystem

From Academia: In Vivo & Robotic-assisted Minimally Invasive Bioprinting, 3DP for Liver Surgery

Smart Spine Surgery- From Planning to 3D Printed Templates

The Past and Present of 3D Printing in Maxillofacial Surgery

Other Expert Corner Blogs

Other From Academia Blogs

The post Medical 3D Printing for Anatomical Models and Surgical Guides appeared first on 3DHeals.

Pitch3D is set to be recurrent each month, aiming to create an opportunity for early-stage startups in the realm of healthcare 3D printing, bioprinting, and advanced materials to have first meetings with a curated panel institutional investors. The presentations are meant to be short (10 minutes max.) but aim to get to the bottom line quickly to stage a second 1:1 meeting that would be more in-depth and longer with interested investors. The online format also avoids the opportunity cost of the investor-startup meeting due to time and geographic barriers. To pitch in our future sessions, the application is here. To be included in our investor mailing list, you must be qualified institutional investors, please email us directly: info@3dheals.com.

Three startups pitched online yesterday via the Pitch3D platform to a group of institutional investors.

Here are the companies that have pitched, all of them are seed stage, located all over the world (India, Denmark, and the U.S.). The sessions were short but to the point. Compared to the pitch sessions we saw when we started Pitch3D, the takeaway yesterday was that startups in the healthcare 3D printing and bioprinting are attracting more seasoned entrepreneurs all over the world. Interested investors can also find information on these companies in our Company Directory, which we periodically update with new information.

CARLSMED 

CARLSMED’s team of surgeons, engineers, and industry executives are developing a platform to improve outcomes for complex spine surgery patients. The patented technology uses pre-operative patient imaging and clinical outcome data to create an optimized implant design that is 3D printed for each individual patient. (Investor contact: Mike Cordonnier )

Particle 3D– Particle3D has developed a technology to reconstruct the patient’s exact anatomy with 3D printed patient-fitted implants with bone-like porosity. The implants are made from natural biomaterials that degrade over time and convert into real living bone tissue. (Investor contact: Thea Wulff OIesen and Casper Slots)

Anatomiz3D– is an extensive ‘patient-specific’​ solution provider to the healthcare industry, utilizing Design, 3D Printing, and bioprinting technologies. It is an organization incorporated to be a one-stop solution for all medical products related to 3D Printing, providing services across the world. Being the first and only ones in India to provide soft-tissue patient-specific pre-operative models, Anatomiz3D has a good understanding of the anatomy and technicalities. (Investor contact: Firoza Kothari)

Related Articles:

Pitch3D May 2019: Deep Health; Kumovis; PrinterPrezz; Fluidform

Fundraising in Healthcare 3D Printing, Part II: Are you Printing Money?

Pitch3D July 2019 Nanochon, Revital Therapeutics, Volumetric, iDentical

The post Pitch3D October: Anatomiz3D, Carlsmed, Particle3D appeared first on 3DHeals.

Want to write a piece for 3DHEALS Expert Corner? Email us: info@3dheals.com

There are several main reasons that frequently motivate the innovators:

• Do cool things that could not be done before (e.g. flying, electricity, etc.).
• Make life better by a magnitude of a million times, etc. and not just minor increments (e.g. discovery of antibiotics).
• Save time, labor, and money that would recreate the industrial revolution and new economies.

While the general public is fascinated with both artificial intelligence and 3D printing as powerful new technological tools, and their potential future impact in healthcare, there has not been any known “killer applications” that utilize AI to improve existing 3D printing applications, in or out of healthcare/life sciences. The easy answer could be that both technologies are still relatively new, or that people who focus on AI applications are not necessarily interested in 3D printing, and vice versa. Or, maybe it’s because we simply do not have enough solutions to problems at hand.

Some of the proposed ways AI can improve 3D printing include the following [1-7]:

• Improve prefabrication design process
• Defect/Failure Detection
• Real-Time 3D printing Control/Failure compensation
• Predictive Maintenance/Inventory
• Workflow (Cost) optimization
• Chemical reaction/photopolymerization using ML-based algorithm to maximize control (chemicals and energy input)

There is an interesting analogy that I came across from professor Hiroya Tanaka, [2] with the following image(Figure 1). This shows that the subject “3D printing” has the visible physical components (tip of the iceberg) and the much larger invisible components in the realm of software, including data science, advanced 3D modeling, 3D object storage and retrieval, and AI/ML/Deep learning. While this is in accordance with the belief that “software eats the world” by the Silicon Valley, I would argue that all of these components will be equally important to the achieve the theoretical promises 3D printing as a successful manufacturing alternative.

That said, it is still helpful to do a brief review of where we are in terms of the intersection of these two technologies. Hopefully, this article can inspire interesting discussions, and even better, some new startups that Pitch3D can host very soon.

Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning/Deep Learning

Artificial intelligence is an “intelligence” that is demonstrated by machines, which can perceive its environment and take actions to maximize its chance of success through the “learning” and “problem-solving” process. Machine learning is the scientific study of algorithms and statistical models that computers use to perform a specific task without human instructions, relying on patterns and inference instead. There are unsupervised ML (no human input) and supervised ML (human input). Finally, deep learning, also known as hierarchical learning, is based on artificial neural networks. There are also supervised and unsupervised DL.

The relationships among the concepts of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and deep learning (using artificial neural networks) are best demonstrated in the following diagram. (There are more sub-categories within each of these concepts that interested readers can easily find on the internet.)

The Problems

It is my theory that inventors can be lucky, but the inventions are never accidental. Inventions that changed human history (e.g. robots, computers, 3D printers, microbiology) are results of the continuous search for answers over long periods of time, from different perspectives and angles, and sometimes only after thousands of years.

The current status of healthcare applications using 3D printing is not so favorable because of several reasons:

1. 3D printing is still expensive, not just from the hardware and material cost, but also labor cost, and waste due to print defects and failures.
2. Lack of efficient and affordable design software. This is, in particular, a problem for the healthcare sector.
3. 3D printing is unable to achieve affordable (customized) mass production due to workflow challenges.
4. Lack of good quality control processes and tools, especially for the heavily regulated healthcare sectors.

The list can go on.

However, challenges also present opportunities, and AI/ML seem to be potential solutions to these worthy problems because AI/ML do somethings better than humans in many ways:

• Computers are able to process large amounts of data, learn, and implement actions in a more consistent fashion.
• Computers require little resources to function (i.e. electricity, minimal to no need for human operation).
• Computers can function well even in a toxic or harsh environment. (e.g. high temperature, toxic fumes)
• “Skillset” (algorithms) can be more rapidly “learned” and disseminated in a consistent way than human learning.
• Computers can store and retrieve large amounts of information almost instantaneously.

That said, creating the right AI/ML algorithm to 3D printing is no easy task because of the following:

• Successful AI/MI for the 3D printing process requires extensive knowledge of the specific 3D printing technologies, including but not limited to the design process, control of machine components, material science, post-processing. For example, the strategies behind optimizing the SLA based 3D printing process [1] will be very different from laser sintering metal 3D printing. [4]
• Finding high-value problems based on the end goal of production.  Either it is focused on reducing wasted time or precious materials, or ensuring end product mechanical properties that could result in serious clinical outcomes.  [1]
• Data collection. For example, for 3D printed anatomical models, a good AI/ML product focusing on optimizing the segmentation process will significantly decrease the bottleneck effect of entering the field for many hospitals and clinics. However, the lack of such a product is because of a lack of enough training datasets. [3]
• Intrinsic limitations of existing monitoring systems. Researchers are currently using either photos or videos to train their AI/ML algorithms. Smoothly incorporating the monitoring systems without interrupting the printing process will be challenging. [1, 4, 5] However, such integration will be required to achieve “real-time” 3D printing monitoring and subsequent “fixing” or “failure compensation” of the prints. [1]
• Forming a successful team that can tackle problems along the entire 3D printing process from design to final product requires a group of people from different disciplines. [1] For example, to accomplish real-time SLA 3D printing support modification[Figure 3], Dr. Iuganson proposed in his thesis a team structure that would include the following:

1. 3D printing engineer
2. Sensors technician
3. Automation CT engineer
4. Laser and optics engineer
5. Machine learning specialist develops a set of steps for correction of the printing and generating supports if the problem is predicted.
6. Data scientist creates a code for the machine to change the design structure and generated supports
7. AI research scientist analyses and implements the information in the AI system to add a new feature of real-time control over the design and supports.

Now, imagine that everyone on this team has to understand what is going on and can also communicate effectively with one another!

The Solutions

Solutions seem to be coming, but just not here yet.

GE Additive, Sculpteo, Autodesk, and many more all appear to actively develop AI/ML-based solutions to optimize various value points of the 3D printing process. [6] Align Technology just announced a new AI/ML-based visualization/predictive tool SmileView based on 60 million patient datasets. (Align is also actively hiring AI/ML engineers.) [8] It is my hope that perhaps more entrepreneurs can venture into this exciting intersection of two powerful emerging technologies.

Perhaps this IS where we will find the “killer app” in 3D printing.

References:

1. Artificial Intelligence in 3D Printing (Thesis by Dr. Reino Iuganson)
2. Deep Learning for Advanced 3D Printing
3. The potential for machine learning algorithms to improve and reduce the cost of 3-dimensional printing for surgical planning (Trevor J. Huff, Parker E. Ludwig & Jorge M. Zuniga) ISSN: 1743-4440 (Print) 1745-2422 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ierd20
4. Machine Learning “Fixes” 3D-Printed Metal Parts—Before They’re Built
5. Automated Process Monitoring in 3D Printing Using Supervised Machine Learning
6. Artificial Intelligence Applications in Additive Manufacturing (3D Printing)
7. Multi-Objective Optimization Design through Machine Learning for Drop-on-Demand Bioprinting
8. New Dental Product: SmileView from Align Technology

Related Articles:

From Academia: 3D Printing and Robotics, Stem cell coated Implants, Decentralized Mitigation of Pandemics

Five Reasons Cybersecurity Will Play a Critical Role in 3D Printing in Healthcare – Part 1

The Augmented Mind: How AR/VR will empower 3D Printing technology in bettering the real world.

Decentralized Healthcare — Part I. Cooler than Bitcoins, But What Is It?

The post When Artificial Intelligence Meets 3D Printing appeared first on 3DHeals.

Innovation in silos is dangerous. What’s equally unrealistic is to think that 3D printing will be the only force that will save the world. It will not. Often times, several technologies can work together to create something much more powerful. Several articles in this week’s selection demonstrated the merge of robotics and 3D printing technologies, with various application. One particular fun read was from an Italian group that created a self-growing obstacle avoiding robot that also simultaneous acts as a 3D-printer, enabling a tree-root like growth through an artificial pathway. What healthcare application can you think with that technology? Relating to my recent visit to the Cleveland Clinic, autonomous robotic surgery may not be as far as you can imagine. Another equally intriguing paper was by an Isreali group focusing on decentralized mitigation of world pandemics. This paper has more math than perhaps we want, but it is a serious discussion on how 3D printing can be leveraged in solving public health issues. I have touched upon decentralized healthcare in the past from a different angle. 

“From Academia” features recent, relevant, close to commercialization academic publications. Subjects include but not limited to healthcare 3D printing, 3D bioprinting, and related emerging technologies.

Email: Rance Tino (info@3dheals.com) if you want to share relevant academic publications with us.

Improvement of osseointegration by recruiting stem cells to titanium implants fabricated with 3D printing

Authored by Mary Bollman, Raphael Malbrue, Chunhong Li, Hong Yao, Shengmin Guo, Shaomian Yao. ANNALS of the New York Academy of Sciences. October 11 2019.

Immobilization of BMP-2-derived peptides on 3D-printed porous scaffolds for enhanced osteogenesis.

Authored by Xiashiyao Zhang, Qi Lou, Lili Wang, Shan Min, Meng Zaho, and Changyun Quan. Biomedical Materials. November 15 2019.

CT and MRI compatibility of flexible 3D printed materials for soft actuators and robots used in image-guided interventions.

Authored by Wiebke Neumann, Tim P. Pusch, Marius Siegfarth, Lothar R. Schad, Jan L. Stallkamp. Medical Physics. October 6 2019.

Passive Morphological Adaptation for Obstacle Avoidance in a Self-Growing Robot Produced by Additive Manufacturing

Authored by Ali Sadeghi, Emanuela Del Dottore, Alessio Mondini, and Barbara Mazzolai. Soft Robotics. February 6 2020.

Digitizable therapeutics for decentralized mitigation of global pandemics

Authored by Adar Hacohen, Reuven Cohen, Sol Efroni, Baruch barzel and Ido Bachelet. Nature Scientific Reports. October 4 2019.

The post From Academia: 3D Printing and Robotics, Stem cell coated Implants, Decentralized Mitigation of Pandemics appeared first on 3DHeals.

Want to write a piece for 3DHEALS Expert Corner? Email us: info@3dheals.com

3D Printed PU-based conduits with 3D engineered Schwann cell blocks for enhancing the peripheral nerve regeneration

The nervous system is part of our body and plays a key role in coordinating action and sensory information as well as communicating between different body parts through the electrical signal transmission. The system works by coordinating inputs from different sources and transforming them into actions and autonomous outputs that respond to environmental changes. Therefore, severe neurological dysfunction or injury can lead to disability and have a significant negative impact on the quality of life of patients [1]. The human nervous system can be identified as two subsystems, one is the central nervous system (CNS) and the other is the peripheral nervous system (PNS). The CNS includes the brain and spinal cord, while the PNS contains other nerve tissues besides the brain and spinal cord [2]. Patients involved in major trauma often suffer from peripheral nerve damage due to the extent of the impact, and such injuries typically include nerve compression, nerve damage or tearing or even ischemic injury. Other causes of peripheral nerve injury include surgery and other complications. These damages can then lead to a variety of neurological dysfunctions and diseases. In addition, studies have shown that approximately 2.8% of patients still claim peripheral neuropathy after treatment, some have neuropathic pain and permanent dysfunction, and some patients have a permanent disability even after years of recovery [3]. With the advancement of medical technology and knowledge, the success rate of peripheral nerve therapy has increased significantly. However, due to the limited regenerative capacity of the nerves, there is still a huge gap between the upon solutions and the complete recovery of neurological function. To date, the inclusion of regenerative medicine in peripheral nerve therapy remains challenges [4] due to major obstacles including lengthy duration of regeneration, limited neuronal sources of autografting, and autologous transplant rejection. Therefore, scientists are always looking for new solutions to overcome these challenges. Tissue engineering has long been regarded as a potential replacement for nerve transplantation since the past decade, and it has become an important research topic in the field of nerve regeneration [5].

Attempting to regenerate or replace severe nerve damage is a major challenge nowadays. Temporary loss of neurological function after any nerve injury is unavoidable due to the disruption of communication between nerves. Previous cases have shown that patients who underwent >15 mm neurological repair often claimed loss of function even after recovery. In addition, nerve damage involving > 15 mm distance may significantly reduce nerve regeneration due to the disruption of internal nerve contact between the proximal and distal ends [3]. Clinically, autologous nerve grafting is currently the mainstream treatment for nerve damage. Neural grafts from autologous sources are optimal because they are not only proven to protect damaged nerve tissue, but also help guide axonal regeneration and connect to one nerve ending to another. In recent years, it has been suggested that 3d porous scaffolds only provide temporary support for cell growth in cells [6]. However, modern stents have evolved into a key factor in tissue engineering applications, and these stents have proven to be more than just containers or supports [7]. Therefore, they are also rich in growth factors, which can significantly promote nerve regeneration [8]. Among them, Zhang conducted a 20-year study involving peripheral nerve defects, and the data collected were used to establish research guidelines for peripheral nerve conduits [9]. Studies have shown that neuropathy with a size of 9.7 ± 1.8 mm can be successfully regenerated by the use of a nerve conduit. However, for the repair of rat sciatic nerves greater than 10 mm, several different proteins such as laminin [10], fibronectin [11] and collagen [12] need to be incorporated into the nerve conduit to achieve optimal nerves regeneration.

China Medical University (CMU) adapted the advancement of additive manufacturing technology to fabricate innovative nerve conduits with complex pore patterns and dimensions with high precision. We used Digital light processing (DLP), a photo-polymerization technique to cross-link photo-curable materials, to fabricate nerve conduits. This printed nerve conduit will present as a scaffold for two reasons in this research, one is to hold/contain the decellularized extracellular matrix (dECM) of nerves and the other is to exist as a scaffold for nerve regeneration from the damaged nerve ends. The dECM was usually obtained by exposing harvested nerves with chemical or physical methods to remove unnecessary cellular components, thus only maintaining the structural proteins and several growth factors that were supposed to mimic the microenvironment of normal tissues. In the CMU 3D Printing group, we fabricate water-based light-cured polyurethane (PU) nerve conduits with DLP technology. To improve the resolution and biocompatibility of PU, homogenous polydopamine (PDA) and dECM were mixed into the raw material. Mechanical properties and chemical composition were analyzed using the EZ test and electron spectroscopy for chemical analysis (ESCA). In general, PU/PDA/dECM conduits (Figure 1) were able to influence and enhance stem cell adhesion, proliferation and neural differentiation of stem cells.

Furthermore, our group also adopted an updated method to manufacture the three-dimensional cell-containing blocks, as Figure 2. This innovative 3D cell-containing blocks achieved several advantages including first, being able to be efficiently expanded to achieve rapid production; secondly, having standardized size in order to prevent them from blocking or destroying the nozzle during their processing or passing through the nozzle of the bioprinter; thirdly, manufacturing methods thereof not able to induce significant cell damage and/or gene (DNA) damage; and fourthly, manufacturing methods thereof not able to impair its ability to integrate into tissues. In nerve regeneration, we used the microRNA-transfected Schwann cells (SC) to fabricate the SC blocks and loaded SC blocks into the nerve conduit to enhance nerve regeneration rate. Signal-channel neural conduits with SC blocks were implanted into Sprague-Dawley rats [Figure 3 and 4] and observe the SC blocks will secrete more nerve growth factor (NGF) and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). In an animal in vivo study, there was no foreign body membrane formed around the nerve conduit and could be incorporated with natural growth factors for optimal biocompatibility in regenerative nerve tissue engineering.

References:

1. Cheney, F. W.; Domino, K.; Caplan, R. A.; Posner, K. L. Nerve injury associated with anesthesia. Anesthesiology 1990, 90, 1062–1069.

2. Kouyoumdjian, J. A. Peripheral nerve injuries: A retrospective survey of 456 cases. Muscle & Nerve 2006, 34, 785–788.

3. Tajdaran, K.; Gordon, T.; Wood, M. D.; Shoichet, M. S.; Borschel, G. H. A glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor delivery system enhances nerve regeneration across acellular nerve allografts. Acta Biomater 2016, 29, 62–70.

4. Johnson, B. N.; Lancaster, K. Z.; Zhen, G.; He, J.; Gupta, M. K.; Kong, Y. L.; Engel, E. A.; Krick, K. D.; Ju, A.; Meng, F.; Enquist, L. W.; Jia, X.; McAlpine, M. C. 3D printed anatomical nerve regeneration pathways. Adv Funct Mater 2015, 25, 6205–6217.

5. Xia, B.; Lv, Y. Dual-delivery of VEGF and NGF by emulsion electrospun nanofibrous scaffold for peripheral nerve regeneration. Mater Sci Eng C Mater Biol Appl 2018, 82, 253–264.

6. Maiti, B.; Díaz Díaz, D. 3D printed polymeric hydrogels for nerve regeneration. Polymers 2018, 10, 1041

7. Kankala, R. K.; Xu, X. M.; Liu, C. G.; Chen, A. Z.; Wang, S. B. 3D-printing of microfibrous porous scaffolds based on hybrid approaches for bone tissue engineering. Polymers 2018, 10, 807.

8. Jubran, M.; Widenfalk, J. Repair of peripheral nerve transections with fibrin sealant containing neurotrophic factors. Exp Neurol 2003, 181, 204–212.

9. Ko, C. H.; Shie, M. Y.; Lin, J. H.; Chen, Y. W.; Yao, C. H.; Chen, Y. S. Biodegradable bisvinyl sulfonemethyl-crosslinked gelatin conduit promotes regeneration after peripheral nerve injury in adult rats. Sci Rep 2017, 7, 1062.

10. Wu, T.; Li, D.; Wang, Y.; Sun, B.; Li, D.; Li, D.; Morsi, Y.; El-Hamshary, H.; Al-Deyab, S. S.; Mo, X. Laminin-coated nerve guidance conduits based on poly(l-lactide-co-glycolide) fibers and yarns for promoting Schwann cells’ proliferation and migration. J Mater Chem B 2017, 5, 3186–3194.

11. Toll, E. C.; Seifalian, A. M.; Birchall, M. A. The role of immunophilin ligands in nerve regeneration. Regen Med 2011, 6, 635–652.

12. Yao, L.; Daly, W.; Newland, B.; Yao, S.; Wang, W. C.; Chen, B. K. K.; Madigan, N.; Windebank, A.; Pandit, A. Improved axonal regeneration of transected spinal cord mediated by multichannel collagen conduits functionalized with neurotrophin-3 gene. Gene Ther. 2013, 20, 1149–1157.

About the Author:

Dr. YiWen Chen received her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering (Nanomaterial Group) Florida State University, USA. She joined China Medical University Hospital and funded the 3D Printing Medical Research Center in 2014. She is responsible for leading the team and developing and implementing the 3D printed medical research and clinical application integration. She is also the Associate Professor of Graduate Institute of Biomedical Science at China Medical University since then. Dr. Chen’s research interests focus on to develop and deliver advanced and affordable 3D printed medical care including biomedical devices, implants, and therapeutics for medical applications. Several of her patents and technologies have to tech-transfer to industries. She was awarded the 2017 and 2018 Innovation in Taiwan. She is also a member of the Board of Supervisors of the Additive Manufacturing Association in Taiwan(AMAT) and a board of directors of China Medical Derivatives Corporation – Everyoung Biomedical International. She is responsible for providing relevant technical advice and is often invited to serve as lecturers at many international academic conferences. Many achievements of her research team are also recognized by high-impact journals, media, conference scientific publications, and published works. She has published 35 peer-reviewed articles and holds 15 issued/pending patents.

Related Articles:

Smart Spine Surgery- From Planning to 3D Printed Templates

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Taipei Taiwan Event Recap: 2018 – What’s next after the hype?

3D Bioprinting Personalized Brain Tissues

The post 3D Printing for Peripheral Nerve Regeneration appeared first on 3DHeals.

Want to write a piece for 3DHEALS Expert Corner? Email us: info@3dheals.com

Where do you see yourself in 5 to 10 years? It’s a common question asked during the interview process. The purpose of the question isn’t to obtain some clear objective answer. Rather, the purpose of the question is to assess one’s ambitions and to determine if the candidate is a career goal-oriented. Let me augment the question slightly. Where do you see your 3D printing program in 5 to 10 years?

The question may have posed a real challenge to early adopters of “point-of-care” manufacturing several years ago. However, we are now in the early stages of seeing real reimbursement for hospital-based 3D printing programs. The Category III CPT code 0559T and its modifier 0560T can be used when producing a 3D printed patient-specific model to aid in pre-operational planning. While the Category III CPT code 0561T and its modifier 0562T pertain to 3D printed patient-specific surgical guides. The implementation of these codes (as of July 2019) is a real milestone within the point-of-care manufacturing community, but there’s still much work to be done. 

For starters, Category III CPT codes are used to track the utilization of emerging technologies, services and procedures. The Category III CPT codes description does not establish a service or procedure as safe, effective or applicable to the clinical practice of medicine. While some private health insurance companies may reimburse for some portion of a 3D printing service, don’t count on Medicaid or Medicare to until the Category I CPT codes exist. A private health insurer can deny the claim of a 3D printed model for patient care on the basis that 3D printed models have not been proven effective in significantly improving the course of patient care and will be deemed not medically necessary.

So, how does the community tackle this challenge?

The Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) and the American College of Radiology (ACR) plan to initiate a new medical 3D printing clinical data registry to collect 3D printing data at the point of clinical care. A joint ACR-RSNA committee will oversee the registry intended to pilot in the fall of 2019. The ACR’s National Radiology Data Registry (NRDR) system will host the 3D printing registry. The registry will provide the quantifiable data supporting the claim that 3D printing to create anatomic models and guides has a significant positive impact on patient care such as reducing blood loss, time in the operating theatre, length of postoperative stay, readmissions; minimizing complications, increasing patient consent, and other important metrics that have long been difficult to capture and report in peer-reviewed literature.

On an individual level, say the tech, engineer, or physician running the day-to-day operations of the 3D printing program, more challenges appear. When in the process of patient imaging to 3D printing are these codes implemented? It’s becoming the popular opinion that one (or more) of these codes is charged under radiology, which makes sense, but only if, at the time of ordering the imaging (CT, MRI, or 3D ultrasound) or interpreting the images, the physician knows an anatomic model will be 3D printed. At the same time, imaging standards for 3D printing typically fit for virtual 3D reconstructions, for which there are already Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) reimbursement through codes 76376 and 76377. It’s important to note that 3D recon (or post-processing) codes cannot be used in conjunction with the new 3D printing codes. This clash may stem from that a virtual 3D reconstruction is one of the steps in producing an anatomic 3D printed model.

Others are under the opinion that the charge or reimbursement should reroute to the parent department of the 3D printing program. After all, not all 3D printing programs are birthed from radiology, rather some programs origins are in plastic, orthopedic, or cardiothoracic surgery. Or does the charge occur at the end-user, the operating room? One goal of these codes is to obtain some sort of standardization across hospital-based 3D printing programs. If that is the case, then having a unified answer to this question plays an important role.

Placing the code under a radiology charge may be more feasible when referencing the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) 3D printing Special Interest Group (SIG): guidelines for medical 3D printing and appropriateness for clinical scenarios. Published in 2018, this article from the journal 3D Printing in Medicine provides a list of many diagnoses categorized in a scoring system (1 through 9) based on the frequency of anatomic 3D printing associated with the said diagnosis. The higher the rating, the more likely an anatomic 3D printed model is considered. The rating and diagnosis can only be taken into consideration as the surgeon will have the final say. Not every Truncus Arteriosus (rating 9) will be 3D printed, but not every Ventricular Septal Defect (rating 3 to 5 depending on size and complexity) is automatically ruled out. 

In the case of an audit, or perhaps for the sake of traceability, integrating a 3D printing program’s workflow with the institution’s electronic health record. Take Epic for example. Epic Systems is one of the largest providers of health information technology, used primarily by large U.S. hospitals and health systems to access, organize, store and share electronic medical records Hospitals that use this software held medical records of 64% of patients in the U.S. and 2.5% of patients worldwide. Creating custom orders in Epic, like the workflow for 3D printing, could take weeks to months at a time with no CPT code to tie the order to. However, now a hospital can create its own customizable 3D printing workflow based on its needs. As annoying as it can be at times, I prefer to gather as much information as I can upfront with multiple physician approvals from imaging to 3D print. Data input such as expected surgical date, priority, turnaround time, anatomy, diagnosis, imaging, and accession number, and sterility capability are worthwhile collecting. Further add-ons in the workflow can include scheduling time for physician review of segmentation and the 3D computer-aided design (CAD) prior to printing, with options to record the time and date of the approvals, when the model has started and finished printing, who the model was delivered to and when. 

Where do you see your 3D printing program in 5 to 10 years? I have had to answer this question several times when developing proposals, not just for my program but for other hospitals as well. I would say the future is hopeful. More medical centers are dipping their toes in and adopting this technology every year, all of which will have data to contribute to the registry. In 2 years, we may very well have the quantifiable data needed to apply for Category I CPT codes for 3D printing anatomic models and surgical guides. Three years from now, the challenge of seeking reimbursement for the use of this technology and service may seem like a distant memory.

Ten years from now we may shift our focus to 3D printing metal, tissues/organs, and or pharmaceuticals in-house for patient care and how to get those services reimbursed.

About the Author:

Robert Wesley. 3D Printing Engineer, St. Louis Children’s Hospital, USA.

Bio: Robert is an experienced biomedical engineer, who has managed hospital-based 3D printing programs. He has acted as a consultant non-profit medical centers looking to invest in the 3D printing space in the Southwestern, Midwestern, and Southeastern regions of the United States. He works closely with research teams in designing and producing prototypes, and with clinical teams to identify anatomy, design and manufacture models, and apply quality standards to the entire process. Focused on capturing tangible cost-savings, he works with business development, finance and accounting, and with supply chain to track the utilization of these in-house centers versus outsourcing to external vendors.

Related Courses:

Introduction to 3D Printing in Hospitals by Robert Wesley

Related Articles:

3D Printing in Hospitals: Challenges and Solutions, a Children Hospital Perspective

Reimbursements for 3D Printed Anatomical Models and Surgical Guides – Decoding the CPT Codes

Pricing Strategies for 3D Printing Related Medical Devices

Healthcare 3D Printing Clinical Trials

Cardiac 3D Printing: The Heart of the Matter

3D Printing Has Come of Age But How Safe Are the Devices Going Into Our Mouth?

Idea to Implementation: Reimbursement, the Elephant in the Room

The post 3D Printing in Hospitals: The Road to Reimbursement appeared first on 3DHeals.

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3D printing has been around for almost 10 years since it went “mainstream” and one of the first thoughts that everyone had were the possible applications in healthcare. Many positive articles including 3D printed heart models, 3D printed prosthetics, 3D printed implants have been published. 

These stories are amazing, and the progress 3D printing has brought to healthcare has been great, yet it is nowhere near the scale that people have envisioned for it. Still, the majority of prosthetics and orthotics are created with traditional methods. Casts are made with the same old plaster of Paris. Same goes for implants. How so? What is the reason why it`s not already become widely used? Are the costs too high? Maybe. But I believe that the key lies in the form of listening to all stakeholders involved in healthcare services. This includes doctors, nurses, clinic management, technicians, insurance representatives, regulator and, of course, the patient. It is common that new innovations more commonly come from people with a technical background (engineers, developers, etc.), however, in healthcare innovators must think about the process and systems as much as about the product or service. Here`s why:

1. Operating 3D printers, modeling, file preparation – it takes time!

When introducing a 3D printed product or service in a clinic, it becomes clear from a process standpoint that 3D printing is not so easy at all and can become quite complex. Do any clinicians have free time to “play” with their 3D printers? No. Do nurses have free time? Also no. Who does?! Large university hospitals or private hospitals have a separate research and technical departments that can maintain, launch and post-process the 3D prints. But what about the hospitals who do not have such departments? Or local clinics who also would benefit from having access to 3D printing technology? Because of this, companies such as Materialise or services such as Shapeways have come into play, to take part in the time-consuming tasks away and make it more accessible for clinicians to use 3D printed technology.

2. What happens if something goes wrong? Who`s responsible?

When 3D printed products reach patients, such as 3D implants or 3D casts, how does the accountability work? If 3D printing is done by company X, 3D modeling by company Y and 3D scanning by the clinic, how to ensure quality checks? If something should go wrong, it`s highly likely that the blaming game would start. Company Y would say that the scan was faulty, thus the model was not precise. Or Company X would say that the model was bad, that’s why the 3D print, in the end, was not good. And so on. If you have such risk, it`s no wonder the general medical community is not too eager to introduce such technology to their patients. One of the way new technology companies solve this, by providing end-to-end services, such as CastPrint, that provides clinics with all the services (software and hardware) so that there are clear lines of responsibility. 

  3. Who will pay for it?

Traditional medical device manufacturers have long outstanding relationships developed over the years with the industry, thus it is easier to sell several hundred thousand worths of equipment. Unfortunately, 3D printing does have such a history, thus each purchase is carefully evaluated for economical and clinical value. Moreover, of a 3D printed services or product would be re-charged to the patient, would the insurance cover it? One of the ways how to avoid any surprises insurance coverage, is to develop relationships with the insurance companies sooner than later, while still developing your 3D product or services, thus once it’s on the market, insurance would cover the services or product and clinics would be more willing to offer it to their patients.

To summarize, in order to bring 3D printing to the general public and “mainstream” healthcare there is still lots of work to be done. Innovators and startups have to closely work with the medical community and develop their 3D printed products and services taking into consideration existing systems and process in place and how would it change using the new services or product. Even if the 3D printed product is better, but it is significantly more challenging to offer it by clinicians than traditional products, it is highly likely that no one will prescribe it.  However, if the 3D printed product or service would not only be better than traditional methods but also be easily accessible for the clinicians and all other stakeholders, then 3D printing will eventually become in healthcare such as common as an x-ray machine or a statoscope.

About the Author:

Sigvards Krongorns is the co-founder of CastPrint, a 3D printed medical technology company specializing in 3D printed casts for fracture injury treatment. Sigvards has a background in business administration from RISEBA University (Riga, Latvia) and for the past years has been working through CastPrint to bring 3D printed technology to “mainstream” healthcare.

Related Articles:

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3D Printing in Prosthetics: Open Source 3D Printed Prosthetics for Hand Amputees

The post What does it take to bring 3D printing technology in to “mainstream” healthcare? appeared first on 3DHeals.

Dr. Raymond Wong graduated with a Bachelor of Dental Surgery from the University of Malaya. While there, he won the University Entrance Scholarship and won the Book Prize for Excellence for the First, Second and Final Professional Examinations (Part 1). He then pursued his specialist training in Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery (OMFS) at the National University of Singapore under the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Post Graduate Scholarship, graduating with a Master of Dental Surgery (OMFS). He subsequently went on to work as a Specialist Registrar at the Sunderland Royal Hospital and a Clinical Fellow at Morriston Hospital, Swansea, Wales in the United Kingdom while on a Health Manpower Development Program under the Ministry of Health Singapore. He obtained a Ph.D. in Medical Sciences from the Radboud University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands. He is a Senior Consultant and Assistant Professor in OMFS at the National University Centre for Oral Health and the National University of Singapore. At the University Level, he is the co-thrust lead for Dentistry, AM.NUS. Dr. Wong was a Past President, Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons Singapore, sits on the Specialist Training Committee, OMFS, represents Singapore as Country Councilor on the Asian Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons as well as holds a Councilor at Large post on the Executive Council of the Asian Association of OMFS and the International Association of OMFS as Singapore Councilor. He serves as a Regional Faculty, Association for the Study of Internal Fixation (AO) Craniomaxillofacial Surgery (AOCMF) at the Asia Pacific region. AOCMF is a nonprofit educational organization dedicated to the teaching of head and neck surgery to surgeons from all specialties. He is also currently the Organizing Chairman, Asian Conference on Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, 2020 in Singapore. Dr. Wong will be speaking in our upcoming August 28th, 2019 3DHEALS Singapore Annual Event.

Jenny: When was the first encounter you had with 3D printing? What was that experience like?

Dr. Wong: I first tried 3D printing in 2008 when I had a case that needed a surgical cutting guide to be fabricated. At that time the place where I worked had bought the Z-Corp printer which essentially had powder base bound by an inkjet and then needed strengthening with cyanoacrylic glue. It didn’t find much use because there was no allocation for a technician and no one knew how to use it. So it became a white elephant and the powder kept on having to be discarded as it had expired. I found the process interesting but quite painful and realized that we needed trained personnel to do this. It was very difficult for busy clinicians to learn how to perform segmentation of the radiologic images, exporting in STL format and deciding on how to position the print on the platform. Essentially I did it by trial and error in between patients and after work with little guidance. That took me the better part of 2 weeks. The computer where we installed the segmentation software kept on hanging and running out of memory and had to be re-booted repeatedly. The first model I printed crumbled and I had to print it again taking 8 hours. The second model I managed to remove from the build chamber but part of it crumbled when I used an air-jet to remove excess powder as recommended by the manufacturer. Another 8 hours later, I managed to use the cyanoacrylic strengthener but my glove got stuck to the model and I managed to peel most of it out individually with a scalpel.

Jenny: What inspired you to start your journey in 3D printing ?

Dr. Wong: The recognition that we already had technological advances at hand but there was little implementation because, for many surgeons, it felt too difficult to learn or little impetus to change since the old methods worked. My argument against that is that there are always better ways to do things and the use of these technologies is not just fancy toys but you actually reduce the incidence of bad complications and improve the frequency of good outcomes.

Jenny: Who inspired you the most along this journey in 3D printing ?

Dr. Wong: The late Emeritus Professor Henk Tideman, University of Hong Kong, who was my Ph.D. supervisor-he made me realize that you need to keep up to date on the latest advances-he was much older than me but more in tune with technology than me. The second person who comes to mind is Prof Adrian Sugar of Morriston Hospital, Wales. He was, again, older than me but in the forefront of advanced digital technology for head and neck surgery.

Jenny: What motivates you the most for your work?

Dr. Wong: I am never content to accept the current way we do something is the best way. There are always ways to improve things.

Jenny: What do you think are the biggest challenge(s) in 3D Printing/bio-printing? What do you think the potential solution(s) is (are)?

Dr. Wong:

Challenges:

Lack of trained personnel

Lack of funding for equipment, training and employing such personnel

Solutions:

Having a centralized centre like that available in NUS (AM.NUS) is a possible way forward for institutions.

Jenny: What were/was the best investment you made in 3D printing? 

Dr. Wong: Spending the time to learn how to clean radiologic images, performing segmentation, learning how to design with a CAD program and doing my own printing. It gave me a deep understanding of the nuances and intricacies involved.

Jenny: What was/is the biggest risk you took in your career?

Dr. Wong:  Using 3D planning for surgery and printing surgical guides exclusively without any backup (in case the printed guides didn’t fit or work). I did the first orthognathic jaw surgery case in Singapore planned using computer virtual planning and then fabricate 3D printed guides in 2011. Prior to that, I had done a difficult post-traumatic deformity case in 2010 using a combination of 3D planning and 3D printed cutting and positioning guides for facial surgery.

Jenny: What is your favorite quote? Why?

Dr. Wong: I like this quote from Prof Ryan Bell- Everyone can have a bad day in the office. For surgeons, a bad day in the office implies a poor outcome for a patient with its own cost and morbidity. The use of digital technology improves good outcomes and increases the frequency of good outcomes. 

This phrase means a lot because as surgeons, things that we do can impact a patient negatively. Not using the best tools at our disposal for treatment and even training is difficult to defend especially when such technologies are not exactly that new.

Related Articles:

Maxillofacial Surgery and 3D printing: Past and Present

Interview: Dr. Nima Massoomi, Board Certified Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeon

Interview: Renata Vano, 3D Printing in Prosthodontics, Brazil

Interview: Dr. Pedro Martinez Seijas, Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeon at Donostia University Hospital

The post Influencer Interview: Dr. Raymond Wong, Singapore appeared first on 3DHeals.

There’s no question that computer modeling, simulation, and additive manufacturing have transformed clinical medicine around the world. What’s always fascinated me, though, is the variety of ways these technologies have been implemented in different hospitals and even different departments within the same hospital. As a prototyping fellow at Sinai BioDesign, a design and prototyping group within the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, I’ve seen firsthand almost all of the ways 3D printing, and more broadly, 3D data can be leveraged within a health system. Like many other tools and data streams, there’s no single way 3D medical data is acquired or used within the health system. In each case, though, these printing, scanning, and rendering applications are crucial to clinical care and research. For part 1 of this Expert Corner blog, I’ll be focusing on use cases for 3D modeling and printing and in next week’s part 2 , I’ll be discussing clinical applications of 3D scanning technologies, the other side of the medical 3D coin.

At Sinai BioDesign, a large portion of our 3D modeling and printing work is focused on pre- and peri-operative applications; providing models of patients’ anatomy for crucial guidance before and during surgical procedures. It often comes as a surprise to people, though, to learn how often we never produce a printed model from the data we acquire. No matter the surgical plan, a 3D model (typically an STL file) is produced from medical imaging data (usually CT and MRI scans). Printing that 3D model, however, is not always the next step in the process.

At Mount Sinai, the decision on whether or not to print a model often falls along surgical departmental lines, with rationales rooted in the nature of different surgeries. Our Department of Neurosurgery, for example, rarely leverages 3D printing in their pre- and peri-operative surgical guidance, opting instead to render the data with a variety of VR and AR tools. For pre-surgical planning, technologies like the Surgical Theater platform are used to produce 3D models of patients’ anatomy, which the surgeon can then manipulate on interactive displays and even “walk” through using VR headsets. While a 3D printed copy of a patient’s anatomy is easier to probe, manipulate, and analyze than the actual patient’s anatomy in the OR, it often doesn’t afford the kind of perspectives and spatial understanding that can be achieved through a VR rendering. Any view that would be blocked by actual anatomies, such as the skull, is also frequently blocked by the printed anatomy. In VR you can shift the transparency of different tissues in much the same way you can adjust the transparency of layers in Photoshop, but you can adjust colors and transparency in a 3D printed model.

Furthermore, the tissues neurosurgeons operate on – mostly brain, blood vessels, and tumors located in and around brain and blood vessels – are very soft and materials with accurate mechanical properties cannot be produced through existing 3D printing technologies. As such, there is little to no tactile information gained through a printed anatomical model and the visual/spatial information is at best as good as what can be obtained through rendering the 3D models in VR. Lastly, Mount Sinai’s Neurosurgery Department frequently employs AR, heads-up display technologies as a means of peri-operatively visualizing anatomical data. This ability to overlay and highlight important anatomical information (say the location of a brain tumor, or important blood vessels that should be avoided) on the live visuals being captured in the OR is arguably even more useful than looking back and forth between a printed model and the patient (at least in the case of neurosurgery).

Although, as the neurosurgery examples show, the lifecycle of an STL in a hospital doesn’t always lead to a 3D printer, there are many cases in which it does, and many departments that almost always print anatomical models for surgical guidance. For purposes of surgical planning, the Ear, Nose, and Throat (ENT) department at Mount Sinai is one of the most avid users of printed anatomical models. Many ENT procedures require the use of endoscopic cameras and surgical tools, typically inserted via the nostrils. Unlike neurosurgery, the tissues involved in ENT procedures are bony and cartilaginous, much stiffer and more reasonably approximated by the thermoplastics and ceramic powders our anatomical models are printed out of. As such, performing a dry run of a planned ENT procedure on the printed copy of a patient’s anatomy comes much closer to approximating the conditions that will be experienced in the OR. Very often, this means using the same types of endoscopes as catheters on the printed model as would be used on the patient while evaluating maneuverability, fit, and overall strategy.

When not intended for patient-specific practice, Sinai BioDesign’s printed anatomical models are frequently used for more generalized practice, especially for neurological procedures such as stereoelectroencephalography (SEEG), which involved the placement of electrodes deep into the brain. As you might imagine, a procedure that involves drilling through the skull and inserting foreign objects into the brain is also a procedure that requires a lot of training and practice. Many of the commercially available practice models do a poor job of replicating actual human anatomy, so we’ve begun producing our own practice models using a combination of 3D printing and casting techniques. The skull and key vasculature to be avoided are printed from a hard, ceramic powder (which happens to feel fairly similar to bone, with respect to drilling) and a cast of a brain (my brain, in fact[1] ) made from a cryogel that replicates the mechanical properties of brain tissue is inserted inside the printed skull. The fully assembled models are then used with the SEEG drilling equipment for training courses for surgeons. These hybrid printed/cast anatomical models have been so successful at replicating human anatomy, at both the physical and mechanical levels, that the production of skulls for SEEG training is likely the single largest application of 3D printing at Mount Sinai.

When considering the impact of 3D printing in medicine, we often primarily consider the impact of printed objects that are directly integrated into the surgical cycle, be they implants, prostheses, or pre-surgical planning models. It is important to remember, though – and I hope my examples from Sinai BioDesign illustrate this – that there are many ways 3D printing (and the 3D files that precede printing) impact clinical care even when not directly integrated into a surgery. Printed models, like our SEEG dummies, are helping democratize training for complex surgical procedures and creating more realistic practice environments. Furthermore, the digital models that produce all of these printed objects don’t even need to be physically manifested to have crucial clinical utility. In cases such as neurosurgery, where a printed model doesn’t necessarily add much to the pre-surgical planning process, VR pre-surgical “walkthroughs” and AR peri-operative guidance can decrease procedure durations and improve outcomes. 3D medical technologies will likely never be used in the same way everywhere, but I think it’s clear all of them will play a crucial role somewhere.

About the Author

Joseph Borrello

Joseph Borrello is currently a biomedical engineer and PhD Candidate at Mount Sinai, working in the labs of Drs. Kevin Costa and Junqian Xu, in addition to managing digital fabrication operations within the Sinai BioDesign innovation team. Previously, he worked at 3D Systems on technical development in the consumer marketing department and as a liaison with engineering project management teams.

He received his bachelors in Biomedical Engineering from Macaulay Honors College at The City College of New York, where he remains active in the Zahn Innovation Center, an on-campus tech startup incubator.

Joseph is also an active member of the New York City startup ecosystem. He is the founder of Proto-Sauce, which is developing new materials for resin-based 3D printing, as well as the CTO of Biosapien, leveraging 3D printing to produce personalized therapeutics. He also tries to summarize as many of the local happenings as he can in his newsletter Magnitude and Direction.

Finally, Joseph is also the editorial assistant for 3DHEALS Lattice newsletter, where he tirelessly curate the best content for healthcare 3D printing and bioprinting community with the 3DHEALS team.

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3D Printed Orthopedic Implants in China and the Challenges in Commercialization

Bio Simulator and 3D Printing

The post Clinical Applications of Medical Modeling- Part One appeared first on 3DHeals.