Possible Future of Medical Industry

To give a brief overview, throughout this paper, I discuss the different aspects of how medical printing technology causes booming advancements. You can expect connections between what is being talked about to my experiences. Some of these include a connection to how I helped a kid, and how medical printing would help him and my personal experience with Braces. I also will go on some tangents to give you some more context in order to help you further understand what I am talking about.

When I was in 7th grade I started an adaptive soccer program in my town with my dad called TOPsoccer. This was the beginning of my interests of braces and prosthetics. Then in 8th grade, I tore my ACL and I went through numerous braces, and the way they scanned/ made my brace interested furthering my interest in this topic, Medical Printing. So, I want to research how medical printing changes the developments in the medical field, because I want my audience to understand the great effect that innovations in technology have in the medical field.

Just to give some more context about TOPsoccer, TOPsoccer is an adaptive soccer program that is recognized nationally. What this means is that it is soccer for people with disabilities. You could think about it kind of like the Special Olympics, but a lot less competitive. The way that TOPsoccer works is you pair one or two people with disabilities, which we classify as players, with a group of about 3–5 people without disabilities, which we classify as buddies. We meet every Saturday morning from the start of school till Indigenous People’s Day. And every week is a new focus, it could be anywhere from shooting to even celebrations, yes we do practice our celebrations. Of course though, we make sure it is all fun and games, so if the players want to shoot on the goal, because who does not, we will incorporate dribbling into the shooting.

Back on track, when it comes to the medical field, advancements are always happening. Well using 3-D printing in the medical field, also known as medical printing, is one of the biggest advancements in the medical field. There are multiple areas of Medical printing, but they can be roughly generalized into 4 main sections. Allie Narwat, author of the article “ 3D printing in the medical field: four major applications revolutionizing the industry.” Just to add some credibility to Narwat’s name, a lot of their articles focus on medical, 3D printing, or a combination of the two. In this article, the four sections are: “ Bioprinting tissues and organoids”, “creating patient-specific organ replicas”, “3D printing of surgical instruments”, and “ Custom-made prosthetics using 3D printing”. With these types of Medical printing, projecting a lot of significant changes in the medical field is not that far from what the current day human mind can think about. The two types of medical printing focused on in this synthesis, and that I believe will have the greatest effects on innovations in the medical field are printing prosthetics, which will allow for huge advancements in the medical field because it allows for prosthetics to be customized and more precise, and bioprinting, which is printing with cells and tissues, can advance ethical disease research.

To give some a comparison about how medical printing impacted innovations when it first started vs now. Using a 3D printer for medical reasons, was first used for “dental implants and custom prosthetics in the 1990s”(History). Whereas now, as stated earlier, there are four main types of medical printing: Bioprinting tissues and organoids, patient specific organ replicas, 3D printing of surgical instruments, and Custom-made prosthetics. Bioprinting and prosthetic printing will be elaborated on more so in this synthesis, so go give a brief overview of the other two that will not be focused on in this paper. Printing patient specific organ replicas can be used for practicing surgery on organs before doing the real thing. Finally, 3D-printing surgical instruments is very important because they are able to be produced in a more sterile or precise way.

As for companies, in my research I have discovered that Organovo is the leading company in medical printing. This was found on a website by the name of “Science Service Dr. Hempel Digital Health Network”. The medical printing that Organovo specifically does is bioprinting. Their main focus is bioprinting livers.

To bring us back to focus on printing prosthetics, in December of 2019, Kayla Matthews wrote an article about 3 pros and cons to 3d printing medical devices and prosthetics. One of the pros that they pointed out was “Just-In-Time Manufacturing Approach to on-Demand Devices”. On the one hand it means that companies will not necessarily be wasting money on creating excess medical devices, and on the other hand, if a patient, hospital, or even doctors’ office requires some type of medical device that needs to be made, “it’s possible for manufacturers to quickly create devices in response to patient demand”(Matthews). This is significant considering customized medical devices can make it easier for patients and clients to request medical devices in a specialized, or customized way which will improve the medical industry. Matthews is a writer for numerous sites that specializes in medtech and health innovation.

Additionally, in the article that Matthews’ wrote, there also were some cons of medical printing. There was one main con point that stood out to me, this was that “3D PRINTING PROCESS IS NOT ECO-FRIENDLY” . This is very important, especially in today’s current environment and climate because in order to help innovate something it is good to have everyone on board. “[O]ne study found that 3D printers utilizing heat or lasers use 50 to 100 times more electricity than traditional production methods to make an object of equal weight.”(Nichols). Nichols is a writer for a website by the name of Fabbaloo. They have written numerous articles on the topic of 3D printing, which gives them credibility for the information that this source provides us with. With the climate and views of the environment always changing, this is something that people have to be conscious about.

Now into the two types of medical printing that I will be focusing on, prosthetic printing, and bioprinting. The first topic that I will be discussing is using medical printing for custom prosthetics. Earlier, I started an adaptive soccer program with my dad in my local community, and in 8th grade, I ended up tearing my ACL, using a lot of leg braces. Although braces are not exactly prosthetics the benefits of using medical printing to create them are similar. When working with kids in adaptive soccer, I got a chance to experience different types of braces and stabilizers. Before I continue, I want to go on a bit of a tangent about this topic.

One thing I noticed was a lot of the braces, or stabilizers looked alike, almost as if they are a pre-sized product, or made to fit the child’s size, but not fully custom to the shape of their body part. One example of this is when I was assisting a young child with an ankle stabilizer, his foot would constantly slip out needing his foot to be repositioned. Being able to fully customize the stabilizer in this situation would greatly affect the performance of the player, and stabilizer. The reason that there would be a performance increase is because 3D printers are very precise, and so if you scan in the shape of the body part, you can be a lot more accurate with how well the stabilizer fits to the body part.

Using 3D printing for customizing prosthetics can also be a huge benefit because, “3D printing significantly speeds up the process, as well as creating much cheaper products that offer patients the same functionality as traditionally manufactured prosthetics.” (Narwat). Anissa Mota, an engineering student from California State Polytechnic University, mentioned in their research paper that the 3 main materials that are normally used in prosthetics are metal, polymers, and carbon fibers. Although all these materials do seem reasonable to why they are used, there are a few areas that using medical printing for prosthetics can improve.

The first way printing prosthetics can fix is because there are multiple different materials that all need to be molded or shaped in different ways, it means that there is some delay from when each part is made. With medical printing, this could be fixed because printers can print from a multitude of different materials. There can be questions about weather the strength of the materials will then decrease, but from my personal experience with printing material, yes, if you use basic 3D printer filament, that you can find in a school, it would not be strong enough, but if you get the right materials, it can be made significantly strong. Also with using 3D printers, they can be printed a lot more efficiently. One way to think about this is if you need to use three different areas for each material. The amount of area that a printer would take up is a lot less than a machine, especially if for the lets say metal area, if you do not use printers, you probably, need to store a lot of metal on racks, and you may have a machine to clean the metal, then cut, then blow it off, then cool it, and all these extra machines. Whereas for printers, the material can take up significantly less space, because it is spooled up, and when the printing happens, it prints it into the desired shape, so you do not have to worry about clearing off all of the excess material from cutting it.

The second type of medical printing that I am discussing is bioprinting. Bioprinting is made up of so many small things, there are applications, restrictions, and of course ethics. Some of the possible applications for bioprinting can be organ patches, organ replacements, surgery tests, and disease research. Some may believe “[t]his is an exciting new area of medicine. It has the potential for being a very important breakthrough”(Griggs). This quote is from an article that really goes over the topic of Bioprinting is Brandon Griggs’ piece, “The next frontier in 3-D printing: Human organs”, published on CNN Business.

To give some background and credibility to Brandon Griggs, he is a Senior Editor for CNN. According to the page that CNN has about them on their website is that his main specialization is the “coverage of race, religion, and immigration”, but has also covered “innovations in robotics, artificial intelligence and 3D printing”(CNN).

Back to the main topic at hand, bioprinting being an important breakthrough in the medical field. This can be inferred for a multitude of reasons. The first Griggs reason discussed is that bioprinting organs will give researchers a way to try to recreate/grow an infected organ. This will allow scientists and researchers look into the infection/disease that is causing a person harm, and could ethically determine what the cause of it is and how they could fix/heal the organ.

Thus leading us into the topic of ethical debates within bioprinting. Yes, there are some ethical concerns with bioprinting, but isn’t there ethical concerns with all things related to the medical field. When looking at past advancements in tech in the medical field, sure there was probably a debate, but now they are considered standard. They all were things that were tested on a group of people at some point. And yes there probably was some sort of concern for error, but there advancements are being tested to improve the health of the general community. That is what bioprinting is going to be able to do. Yes, it will go through FDA testing, but again everything does. With human testing being one of the last steps, FDA has stated that, “that potential participants be given complete information about the study. This process is known as “informed consent,” and it must be in writing.” (Center for ). With this information, it helps to show that surgeons and scientists do not just pick people and test on them, the people selected are fully aware of everything that could go right or wrong.

Currently there are a lot of developments with bioprinting, and many more to come. Some of the know current advancements in the bioprinting area of medical printing are printing liver patches, “[i]n China, they are already starting to use bioprinted ears for transplants” (Yasinski), and “[a] mouse sized heart out of human cell tissue”(Yasinski). There are a lot of companies that are working on even more advancements with bioprinting technology. One of which is a company by the name of ARMI. As stated by their website, they are “a company that is working on tissue engineering and tissue related products”. I actually got the chance to visit this company in the summer of 2018, and it was definitely a great experience, and I was amazed with what they are doing. Another company is Organovo. This company is working on mainly generating liver patches rather than generating the full organ.

The way that I view it, is that bioprinting has the potential ability to save lives. The reasoning for this statement is because as of right now most organ replacements are from other people’s bodies. Whereas with bioprinting, people do not have to donate different organs that are able to be donated and live, such as a kidney. Now with bioprinting, the organs will be able to be printed and used. This is important for the advancement of the medical field.

With current and potential future advancements of technology, the medical field will and can have some important and crucial improvements. This is all due to using 3D printing for medical applications, and the improvements that 3D printing causes. This is also so important because it is not just affecting one section of the medical field, but multiple, which is great for developments and advancements. The use of medical printing is going to benefit a multitude of lives.

Works Cited

Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. “Inside Clinical Trials: Testing Medical Products in People.” U.S. Food and Drug Administration, FDA, www.fda.gov/drugs/drug-information-consumers/inside-clinical-trials-testing-medical-products-people.

“CNN Profiles — Brandon Griggs — Senior Editor, CNN Digital.” CNN, Cable News Network, 2 Jan. 2015, www.cnn.com/profiles/brandon-griggs.

Griggs, Brandon. “The next Frontier in 3-D Printing: Human Organs.” CNN, Cable News Network, 5 Apr. 2014, https://edition.cnn.com/2014/04/03/tech/innovation/3-d-printing-human-organs/index.html.

“History — Medical 3D Printing.” Google Sites, https://sites.google.com/a/ewg.k12.ri.us/medical-3d-printing/history.

Matthews, Kayla. “3 Pros and Cons to 3D Printing for Medical Devices.” -, 2019, www.greenlight.guru/blog/3d-printing-medical-devices.

Mota, Anissa. “Materials of Prosthetic Limbs” 10 March 2017. Materials Engineering, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, Student paper. https://broncoscholar.library.cpp.edu/bitstream/handle/10211.3/193171/MotaAnissa_LibraryResearchPaper2017.pdf?sequence=1

Nawrat, Allie. “3D Printing in the Medical Field: Four Major Applications Revolutionising the Industry.” Medicl Device Network@2x, 26 Nov. 2020, www.medicaldevice-network.com/features/3d-printing-in-the-medical-field-applications/.

Nichols, Megan. “What Are the Environmental Impacts of 3D Printing? “ Fabbaloo.” Fabbaloo, Fabbaloo, 23 July 2020, www.fabbaloo.com/blog/2017/12/12/what-are-the-environmental-impacts-of-3d-printing.

“Top 10 Companies in Medical 3D Printing: 3D Bioprinting.” Dr. Hempel Digital Health Network, 25 Apr. 2019, www.dr-hempel-network.com/digital-health-technolgy/top-10-companies-in-medical-3d-printing/.

Yasinski, Emma. “Infographic: Which 3-D Printed Tissues Are Closest to the Clinic?” The Scientist Magazine®, 2020, www.the-scientist.com/infographics/infographic-which-3-d-printed-tissues-are-closest-to-the-clinic-67188.