SOMERVILLE, Mass. — 3D printing in healthcare is quickly moving from experimentation to everyday clinical use. A 3D printer company based in Somerville is helping hospitals all over—including Boston Children’s—create one-of-a-kind prototypes that benefit both the doctor and the patient.
At Formlabs in Somerville, they’ve been making 3D printers for over 20 years.
“We enable people to bring their ideas to life,” said Bradley Heil, the Global Regulatory and Compliance Leader at Formlabs.
And one of their biggest clients within the last decade has been in healthcare.
“We’re seeing more hospitals realize that there is this potential to do it themselves and not have to outsource it and spend that extra time and extra money,” said Heil. “They can invest in themselves, build up the skill, and enable printing in-house.
Heil says medical manufacturing happens everywhere, but more of it is happening right in the hospital, and it has several benefits.
“I think one of the big things is being able to get that personalized care, something that’s tailored to a specific patient, and 3d printing enables you to do that,” said Heil. “It also enables you do that quickly. So a place like a hospital can maybe get a print turned overnight and be able to use it in a case the next day.”
The technology has come a long way since Mariah Latshaw began designing trainers at Boston Children’s.
“When I first started we had to stick my hand into a vat of silicone and I had to wait there for like an hour for it to cure and then I could try to like grab my hand out of this mold and then we created out of silicone,” said Mariah Latshaw, the Manager of Trainer Design and Education at Boston Children’s Hospital.
Now the 3D printers create layers and intricate details that provide doctors a hands-on look at what they’ll be operating on.
“They’re able to see a lot of the nuances that they might not be able to pick up on when they look at a CT scan and they’re to plan out what kind of tools are going to need, if they need to put anything into the patient,” said Latshaw.
Latshaw says this also helps doctors plan ahead of time what specific tools and the size they’ll need—saving time and money, and increasing patient outcomes.
“All these drawings on here represents cuts that they might make during the surgery to figure out the best way to help the patient,” said Latshaw.
The trainer not only helps the doctors prepare for a surgery, but it also helps the patient see what will happen and how the medical team will fix it.
“It allows them to have that confidence that, okay, I know what the surgeons are going to do, what they’re going to look for, and have that confidence that they’re going to be taken care of,” said Latshaw.
Latshaw says 3D printers have opened so many opportunities at Boston Children’s, creating these educational tools that include layers representing bone, fat tissue, and skin. Heil adds the technology is only going to get better.
“I think, the more applications that are out there that can be 3D printed, we’ll see even higher adoption at the hospitals,” said Heil.
In April, the largest 3D printing conference in North America will be held in Boston for the first time. With Boston being a hub in the medical 3D printing field, Latshaw says she hopes it will encourage other institutions to start experimenting with it.
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