3D Printing Applications in Healthcare - Transforming Healthcare, Episode 3,...

Personalized medicine is a medical model in which physicians use diagnostic tests to figure out which medical treatments will work best for every patient.

New tools and advanced technologies like genome editing, artificial intelligence, wearables, and 3D printing are important for improving the personalized medicine model.

Medical devices produced by 3D printing include orthopedic and cranial implants, dental restorations, external prosthetics like hands and legs, and surgical instruments such as forceps, hemostats, scalpel handles, and clamps.

Some 3D-printed devices are printed from a typical design to create multiple identical copies of identical device.

Patient-specific devices are created from a particular patient's imaging data.

Patient-specific organ replicas can be created that surgeons can use to practice on before performing complicated operations.

Using patient-specific organ replicas for surgical planning has been proven to speed up procedures and minimize trauma for patients.

3D printing can be used for the pharmaceutical industry.

The repeated advancement of 3D printing technologies could move pharmaceutical production from mass manufacture to on-demand personalized dosage forms, which would provide patients with more safe and effective medicine.

Scientists are researching the way to use 3D printing to manufacture living organs like a heart or a liver.

Research on 3D printing living organs is in early stages of development according to the FDA.