Dec 27, 2025 To wrap up our year at 3DHEALS, we dug deeper into Design for 3D Technologies at our latest event. We listened to the stories of four entrepreneurs and designers who are making tremendous strides in healthcare 3D printing. Design for additive manufacturing (DfAM) is rooted in software, and we got a close-up look at the latest advancements in CAD modeling as well as the regulatory challenges innovators face despite these in-silico simulation platforms. We also had the opportunity to see some stunning 3D prints, including a personalized seating solution for patients with cerebral palsy, and to learn about the ways automation and AI are transforming the industry. Read our event recap below, and watch event highlights below. You can also view the whole event on 3DHEALS Courses. The proceeds from our courses help us curate more similar future events.
How are experts creating custom 3D-printed products for patients?
Most people hardly think twice about the chair they’re sitting on. What’s more to think about? A chair is a chair. However, for Alexander Geht, Founder and CEO of Testa-Seat, seeing beyond the seeming mundaneness of sitting has led his company to create incredible designs made possible by 3D printing.
Geht, an Industrial Designer, is creating seating solutions for children with cerebral palsy and other physical disabilities. For these patients, chairs must be specifically designed to support their bodies and avoid further skeletal deformations properly. The lack of proper seating can interfere with day-to-day activities, including eating, bathing, playing, and learning, leading to developmental delays.
Specialized seats on the market tend to be bulky and hard to move around, yet they’re pretty expensive to buy for all the different places kids need to sit. Off-the-shelf seats also don’t offer the right shape to precisely fit a growing kid’s body, leading to suboptimal solutions.
Geht’s approach has been to leverage digitization and 3D printing to create custom seating solutions that meet the unique needs of patients, with a custom-fit, lightweight design that goes wherever the kid goes. Caregivers can provide a few measurements with a ruler, work with the designers to make some fine-tuned adjustments, and receive their child’s 3D-printed seat from a company that’s already bringing much joy to many families, clinicians, and children.
What’s particularly important about Geht’s approach is his values in working closely with families and patients to deliver 3D printing innovations that specifically meet their needs. For example, families especially wanted designs that had a small footprint so the seat could be moved around easily, and Geht delivers. Testa–Seat is compact, easy to carry, and even small enough to fit into a stroller.
Geht describes how the company has been growing alongside the kids, continuing to work with their users for many years. Some might see 3D printing as a prototyping technology – make it and throw it away – but there’s real impact when we see 3D printing as a technology that helps us form long-term partnerships with the patients and clients these products are designed to help.
Design is two-fold: there’s the technicality of 3D printing custom products, but there’s also the need to listen. The perspectives of families and patients must always be the number one consideration behind a 3D-printed product, and genuine innovation lies in this meticulous attention to client needs, not what’s hot in the news. And Geht’s work is a clear example of this human-centered design in action.
How are innovators designing multi-material 3D prints?
To create the future of 3D printing, innovators need the right design tools to bring their visions to life. Dr. Robert MacCurdy, Assistant Professor in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder, describes that while 3D printers are capable of fabricating multi-material prints, the software has been lagging.
Multi-material printing has the potential to improve 3D-printed anatomical models and implants by mimicking the diverse mechanical properties of human tissues through the combination of multiple material types. However, while printers may be able to fabricate objects composed of two materials blended in a spatially varying pattern, many traditional computer-aided design (CAD) tools aren’t well-suited for designers to specify how the material type should vary internally within a single object.
In response to this need, Dr. MacCurdy and his lab developed OpenVCAD. This free software package enables designers to create multi-material geometries with just a few lines of code. Users can import CAD files, DICOM images, and more into the program to specify the object’s geometry, then use Python to describe the spatial variation in material types. Ultimately, the program outputs files that can be sent to inkjet and toolpath printers for fabrication.
Developing software tools that enable designers to create more sophisticated prints and are readily accessible to all will allow 3D printers to be used to their fullest potential. Making such works open source for the community to use will help pave the way for many more people to become designers and push beyond the boundaries of conventional CAD tools.
Creating resources that allow others to bring their designs to life and are available for all to use is having a tremendous impact on the 3D field by accelerating innovation.
However, such tools must be crafted to be easily used by individuals from a variety of backgrounds, especially those with a vision of what they want to create but only entry-level experience with coding and computational design software. Creating tools centered on accessibility will help to garner increased attention for multi-material technology and increase the adoption of multi-material prints with enhanced mechanical properties.
What regulatory hurdles are 3D printing designers facing?
Matthew Shomper, Founder/Principal Consultant of Not a Robot Engineering and CTO of Allumin8, shares how some metal implants for orthopedic applications fail to restore the mechanical behaviors seen in healthy bone.
For example, Shomper showed how inserting the traditional femoral implant into the bone for a hip replacement shifts the stresses onto the metal rather than the outside of the bone. This causes the bone to experience mechanical forces differently compared to healthy cases, which can lead to complications after surgery and create more problems for patients.
Shomper demonstrates that the mechanical interactions between novel implants and the bone can be modeled computationally, especially with software such as nTop, to rapidly design better solutions. However, Shomper notes that there are still significant regulatory hurdles since it can be hard to convince regulators that the overly high stiffness of traditional metal parts isn’t a good standard of comparison for restoring the mechanical behavior of the bone. Instead, a less stiff but more carefully designed implant that matches native forces is more effective.
While there can be uncertainty around the regulation of 3D-printed devices and the validation of customized products, innovators must hold strong to their beliefs that the usual way of doing things can be changed for the better. It’s this determination to bring new, disruptive technologies to fruition that has led to Allumin8’s recent FDA clearance and will push 3D printing into reality for patients.
How are medical 3D printing experts using automation and AI?
Automation, particularly with AI, has been one of the highlights of this past year. Nathan Shirley, Experience and Design Lead at HP, works with companies that use HP printers to create automation software that enables rapid, scalable design of 3D-printed parts.
Shirley describes his work with the company Radii Devices to help create a custom, streamlined software solution that allows users to easily input measurements from Radii’s prosthetic socket models and turn them into 3D models that are ready to print. In just a few clicks, clinicians can get Radii’s optimized sockets ready for printing with less manual work.
Automation is critical for companies to create custom 3D-printed medical devices at scale. After all, a custom print that takes months to design and fabricate isn’t sustainable and ultimately won’t serve patients in the future, even if the single print brings tangible medical benefits.
In the coming years, 3D printing innovators will have to wrestle with the question of balancing automation and human connection. AI will provide the field with opportunities to create custom parts at unprecedented production levels, removing the need for extensive manual labor such as segmenting anatomical structures and fine-tuning parameters by eye.
However, it will be important for innovators to hold onto the spirit of 3D printing: to design devices with a specific patient in mind with thoughtful consideration of their needs. 3D printing, at its core, must continue to show patients that their individual needs matter and remain grounded as a technology meant to bring people together to create personalized solutions rather than pull designers away from clients in favor of scalability.
For Nathan Shirley, AI has been an opportunity to automate the coding of basic building blocks, so he can focus on bringing creativity and care to the designs he works on with his clients. It’s this balance that all innovators must strive to find in this new world of computation.
Looking forward to healthcare 3D printing in 2026
Our speakers highlight the incredible artistry and creativity behind 3D printing. And it’s these innovative designs that will help pave the way for solutions to longstanding challenges with traditional devices and treatments. All of this gives us much hope for the new year as we kick it off with Life in 3D (3DHEALS2026) an in-person event that will take place in San Francisco on January 11th Sunday before JPM 2026. Subscribe to 3DHEALS and join our 2026 events live to stay up-to-date on healthcare 3D printing.
Glossary
- Human-centered design (HCD): a framework for strategically incorporating customer needs into the product design process from the very beginning. See more here.
- Computer-aided design (CAD): creating 3D models and performing simulations using specialized software.
- Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM): a standard for medical imaging data, such as CT and MRI scans.
- Matterassumbly:OpenVCAD – related publication is here.
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 improving 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.
Relevant links:
Event Recap: What are the latest updates in 3D technologies for pediatric cardiology?
Event Recap: 3D-Printed Devices In Orthopedics
Event Recap: Microfluidic Devices and 3D Printing
Expert Corner: AI in Healthcare 3D Printing: The Future is Now
Microfluidic Devices and 3D Printing (On Demand, 2025)
Event Recap: 3D Printed Pharmaceuticals
Event Recap: Where is 3D printing for orthotics and prosthetics (O&P) headed next?
Comments