3D Printing: The Contribution Of 3D Printing In Improving Health Outcomes

Our first blog of 2017, titled ' 12 medical technology innovations likely to transform healthcare in 2017' looked at the technologies that we believe will have the greatest impact on the continued transformation of healthcare. This week's blog by Amen Sanghera, an analyst here at the Centre, takes a deeper dive into 3D printing technology and its current and future uses across the healthcare and life sciences industry.

Frankenstein's Lab

During the course of studying for my master's degree in 2013, I worked in a small manufacturing lab towards the top floor of a busy North London hospital. In many ways it resembled how you might imagine Doctor Frankenstein's lab to have looked; the benchtops of the lab and the walls of adjacent corridors were proudly adorned with jars displaying their contents of ears, noses and 'vascular conduits'. However, unlike Frankenstein's lab, the body parts displayed here were fashioned from novel polymers produced by an array of 3D printers.

Though still experimental, the work occurring in this lab aims to reconstitute patient tissue lost or damaged by diseases such as cancer or injuries relating to burns. Essentially, researchers take scans of a patient's tissue, transfer those to computer-aided-design (CAD) software and then print that design to make a scaffold out of 'biocompatible' polymers. The printed scaffold is then 'seeded' with the recipient's own stem cells, with the aim that it will create functional tissue to be surgically transplanted back to the patient. In this endeavour, the coming of age of 3D printing has been a revolutionary step in the manufacturing of truly personalised therapies; it is quicker, cheaper and more accurate (at mimicking the structure of tissues) than the methods preceding it.

Continued Innovation

Since I graduated in 2014, 3D printing (additive manufacturing) has continued to make significant progress, with far reaching and rapidly evolving uses in healthcare. Indeed, analysts' projections place the size of the 3D printed healthcare market between $1.2 billion and $2.3 billion USD by 2020.1,2 Some of the innovative uses in healthcare include:

the creation of customised prosthetics and implants - in 2016, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the use of two 3D printed titanium spinal implants3, which are carefully designed to accommodate the vertebral anatomy and aid in the restoration of proper sagittal balance in the lumbar spine.4 In more mainstream applications 3D...