3d Printing & Healthcare: Pros And Cons Of 3d Printing Technology And Its Applications In The Future

Abstract

3D printing is also called as additive manufacturing is a technique of producing 3D entity/item from a digital file. 3D printing technique helps produce complex designs and shapes using minimum waste compared to traditional production techniques. The medical industry is popular to be one of the most advanced in coming up with innovation with respect to treatments and methods to have been evolved overtime. 3D printers are one of these inventions that had been getting attention lately.

This paper discussed the pros and cons of 3D printing technology and its applications in the future.

This technique is capable of manufacturing 3D drug products, devices that can be used in the medical field, building tissue material and producing organs from digital design sources and come up with new treatments that can help patients in several ways. This technique makes it achievable for workers in the healthcare industry to expand and promote development of replication of human organs, bones, tissue and blood vessels which are uniquely for each patient, it is also used in developing surgical equipment utilization like cutting, drilling and human prosthetics.

Off Late, 3D printing has partially overcome issues like lack of donors to help with organ transplants which is one of the biggest challenges around the world by manufacturing personalized organs, build tissue and organs. In the recent past, this has led to lighter, stronger, products are free from risk of harm and cost efficiency. Custom parts can be provided for everyone which in turn results in higher patient trust on medical professionals since these parts are specially designed for the patients for their specific anatomy.

Keywords: 3D printing, Transplants, Replication, Cost Efficiency

Chapter 1

Introduction

Three-Dimensional printing talks about multiple manufacturing technology designs that yield a physical design model from digital data. 3D printing in the medical industry once seemed to be over achievable but with passing time and revenue invested made it real. This turnover has helped the medical industry to further benefit pharmaceutical and medical industries to manufacture more precise drugs and increase the production of implants and evolve the way doctors and other medical professional design procedures

These Patient-specific three-dimensional anatomy models have proved to be advantageous in today’s methods of personalized treatment. In the subsequent time, the scope of three-dimensional printing would be increasing the scope of manufacturing implantable organs, which in turn will reduce wait lists and save more lives. Compared to the various development processed that are being adopted by the medical industry, Additive manufacturing is a process in which a 3D solid entity or object of any shape and size is developed starting with a digital model.

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate by researching 3D printing in the medical field its pros and cons and how efficient and powerful the technology can be.

Problem statement

In the recent past, organ donors and transplants have been an extreme issue due to lack of donors and with the increasing complexity in health issues over the past decade, not every patient is getting a chance to heal due to long waiting lists which is leading to higher death rate in these situations.

Three-dimensional printing represents an opportunity to minimize wait lists and save more lives of the patients that need transplantation. The future of 3D printing is very promising as bioprinted organs may be put into use by the medical industries.

Goal

The goal of this paper is to demonstrate how 3D printing in the medical industry needs us to think outside the box to advance healthcare systems. Also, the implementation, various advantages and disadvantages of adopting this technology are also depicted in this research paper.

Relevance and significance

Additive manufacturing in the medical field has the potential to majorly improve research, skills and expertise for a whole new generation of medical professionals, has the capacity to increase the trust between the patient and the doctor, helps in understanding the injuries and the diseases involved, increase implementation of implantable customized organs which in turn optimizes surgical procedures and cuts costs. In the recent past, there are upcoming techniques and materials that are put into use to better cater to patient anatomy. The printing machines put into use right now are rigid and do not provide optimum resilience and flexibility compared to biological tissue. Thus, now a days, the materials can minimize the gap between true anatomy and the produced one, specifically keeping in mind the soft tissue.

Research Questions

In this paper, an oversight of the three-dimensional printing application in the medical field is demonstrated, focusing on the usability and drawbacks and how it’s useful for medical professionals. These are the questions what would be catered as part of this:

1. Applications of 3D printing in the healthcare industry?
2. Role of 3D printing in Medical field?
3. Challenges and Future Advances of 3D printing?

Chapter 2

Review of Literature

The field if 3D bioprinting is relatively new, various applications of three-dimensional printing comprise of personalized medicine. For example,

Applications of 3D Printing in the healthcare industry are increasing at a rapid rate, they include:

1. Custom made organ implants
2. Prosthetic Generation
3. Medical Designs
4. Manufacturing Medical Devices
5. Learning Anatomical Replicas
6. Reduce Labor Costs
7. Reduce Inventory Needs

These above-mentioned applications have the ability to spin a new revolution in the healthcare industry.

A few of the technical challenges that can be faced during the process of 3D printing could be listed as 1. 3D positioning where it’s very important for the organ to be printed without any technical mistakes once the post processing work is done. To face this issue, three-dimensional printers have come up with heads that have a number of special sensors that help in accuracy by measuring the width of each layer that’s printed to keep away from any inaccuracies. 2. Preparation of Bio-ink: It is very important that the ink used to print on the organ is always bio- compatible so that it does not lead to any future complications and contamination, the solution for this would be the bio-ink should be less in viscosity for it to easily be discharged from the printing head nozzle, keeping in mind that the consistency of the ink should be thick enough that it holds its design and structure once its printed. If the bio-ink is high in viscosity, it leads to difficult in discharging it from the printing head nozzle. 3. Techniques of Disposition include the various techniques ink is disposed of the nozzle.

Barriers and Issues

The challenges faced with respect to the introduction of bio-printing in real time medicine, whether there should be any limitation to the materials and products used while bio printing, challenges with testing the bio-print once it has been used in humans, ethical questions about the treatment being irreversible, lack of guidance since it’s a new technology and the scope of knowledge can be widened.

Chapter 3

Methodology

3D bio-printing generates cells controlled spatially using the 3D printing technique which aims to fabricate living tissue and functional organs. With the recent advancement in 3D-bioprinting, it is now possible to fabricate bone material, cartilage and 3D printed muscle and organs.

That being said, 3D bioprinting is still in the experimental stage, but has lot of promise. Recently, there was a 3D printer manufactured in the University of China named “Regenovo” which has been a success in generation of 3D samples, which includes functional liver material and human ear cartilage. To fabricate this, the functional tissue comprised of several cell types using three-dimensional printing in the following 3 ways:

• Step 1: Where the cells are first sorted, multiplied and then differentiated. This is what forms bio-ink. This Bio-ink material is used to create natural tissues in layers which is heling in the field of medicine and biotechnology for cartilage and tissue generation and to also reconstruct and regenerate tissue material.
• Step 2: These cells are then implanted into a three-dimensional structure to start building of the tissue material
• Step 3: This 3D printed tissue generated can be used in medical research.

For the cell-matrix structure and printing resolution to be precise its is necessary to keep clean printing conditions, which in turn increases accuracy in building of complex tissues and receive the correct output.

There are 3 stages in 3D Bioprinting:

1. Pre-Processing

This is where all the design and the three-dimensional model are prepared with the use of CT scanning, MCI Scanning and X-Rays etc. These are then converted into a set of instructions to be ingested into the bioprinters

2. Processing

This is where the actual printing takes place using the bio-ink. This stage also comprises of the preparation of Bio-ink

3. Post-Processing

Once the printing is completed, the post-processing stage starts and the organ that’s printed is now transformed into a fully functional organ that can be used in various systems for cell reception, bio-monitoring systems and bio-reactors Mironov et al., 2011). It is where chemical and mechanical simulation of printed parts are used to create stable structures for proper functioning biological material.

Chapter 4

Findings, Analysis & Results

Tissue or organ disfunction can be caused due to various reasons such as aging, disease, accidents, defects in birth etc. Current day implementation heavily depends on organ transplants from the living or dead. But this implementation may not be the best solution due to lack of organ donors and their waitlists. Even if the patient is provided with an organ donation, the transplant surgery and the checkups followed by that can be very cost inefficient. In addition to this, it is very difficult to find the exact tissue match of certain organ transplantations. A solution for this could be generation of cells taken from the patients own body to build a replacement organ which would in turn minimize the chances of potential tissue rejection.

In many of the technologies coming up with solutions for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, 3D printing puts on the table additional key benefits to the traditional methods like extremely precise cell placement, extreme digital control of speed, cell concentration, resolution, the size of the planted cells. Organ printing makes use of this three-dimensional printing methodology to produce cells, biomaterials placed individually layer by layer creating structure that are like tissues. These tissues vary case to case based on the desired strength, flexibility, type for maximum productivity.

The most common 3D bioprinting systems are laser-based, ink-based and extrusion based. This method deposits tiny droplets of living cells onto the substratum to generate human tissues or organs. Various kinds of head nozzles can be used to deposit different cell types based on flexibility and elasticity of the tissue required.

The process for 3D bioprinting that has emerged is listed below:

1. Creating a blueprint or model of the organ with its vascular architecture.
2. Generating a process plan to carry out the bioprinting
3. Insulate Stem Cells
4. Separating the stem cells into cells that are specific to the organs, reinforce and loading into printer
5. Start the bio print
6. Set aside bio printed organ in the bioreactor right before transplantation, to handle this, laser printers have been introduced to facilitate the printing process by exiting the cells in an appropriate pattern which provides controlled special alignment.

Even though 3D bioprinting is still in the evolving stages, many researchers have used this technique to generate knee muscles, heart valves, and various types of cartilage and bone and also a functioning artificial ear using inkjet 3D printing technology to repair human cartilage.

Several biotech companies are also working rigorously int coming up with ways to create tissues and organs for medical research. This 3D printing technology can be used beyond surgical planning to conceptualize the molecular structural elements upon usage.

A good example for 3D printing already making a change in the hearing aid industry within medicine is that, today as per research, about 99% of the hearing aids are manufactured using 3D printing as every individuals ear canal is shaped differently, this allows customized devices to be manufactured with cost efficiency.

Chapter 5

Challenges and Future Prospects of 3D Printing

Challenges

1. Setting Unrealistic Expectations

Due to high expectations and projections by media, researchers and governments, setting of high expectations and unrealistic goals may come into play. Although advances are being made in the direction where 3D printing plays a key role in medicine, there is still a long way to go and it is laudable to appreciate what has already being achieved.

2. Security and Safety Concerns:

3D printing could possibly be vulnerable to potential threats and lack of regulation leading to counterfeit medical devices or medications.

3. Patent Copyright Issues

Limited knowledge and regulations of how patent laws should be applied to use this technology by individuals who might generate these items for personal usage, distribution to no-profit organizations and standardizing on a commercial scale. The distributor willing to sell a printed item should not violate the patent law, hence resulting in copyrights also being an issue with 3D printing.

4. Regulation

Another major challenge in regulation of the 3D printing technology is to secure approvals from regulators which may in turn impede the application of the technology.

Future Prospects

A key role that 3D printing is expected to play is toward customizing medicine, organs and drugs. It is expected to grow within the pharmaceutical industry where we could see a huge change in drug manufacturing and cost efficiency. If this happens, patients will able to cut costs and get customized drugs where they can just pop one poly pill per day and reduce their medication burden.

The most awaited and exiting prospect of 3D bioprinting would be generation of organs, A completely functional printable heart generation is expected as soon as 20 years from now. With the advancement of technology, heterogenous tissues like the liver and kidney tissue could be fully regenerated in the future successfully.

Though this technology is in the early stages of development with many challenges and decent amount of results, such as bioprinted tissues, bones, cartilage it has the potential to become a transformative tool in the healthcare field.

Chapter 6

Conclusion

3D bioprinting has evolved and has the potential to become a transformative tool in the healthcare industry and can be revolutionary when it comes to organ printing, tissue regeneration, creation of prosthetics and customized drugs. Like any other technology 3D printing has its own advantages and challenges in the medical field.

This technique of 3D Additive manufacturing in the medical domain still needs to be explored and researched, but in the current day, its already being applied in the medical field to increase performance and mitigate costs and has huge capacity to grow further.

With increase in printer performances, resolution and available material, researches seem to be moving in the right direction in suing the technology. The prospects of this technology seem to be very exiting and promising and could bring about huge changes in traditional medical methods.

If this happens, many lives could be saved which would be a milestone in the healthcare industry and humanity as a whole.

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