Tag: customization

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How 3D Printing is Influencing the Medicine Industry

3D printing technology has evolved throughout the years, and it has drastically reshaped many industries. In this article, the focus would be put on its impact on the medical industry. Specifically, this article would touch on the features, current application, and controversial areas of the 3D printing technology.

3D printing is different from traditional technology in several different ways. This article would focus on the three main benefits 3D printing bring to the medical field: customization, low-cost and flexibility.

Customization

The first feature of 3D printing is customization. Depending on the individual needs, the model or the product can be tailored to individual users. At the same time, the model or the product can easily scale up depending on the volume demand.

3D printing is becoming more and more widely used in the hospital setting. One application of 3D printing in the hospitals is the rehearsal of surgery. With 3D printing technology, the patients’ specific conditions can be printed out and examined before the actual conduction of the surgery. With rehearsal on the patients’ specific models, the success rate of actual surgeries is much larger. In addition, because the doctors can practice and train on the specific model, it takes less time to carry out the operation. As a result, the patients are exposed to the environment for a lesser time. This further reduced morbidity and mortality rate.

Low-Cost

The second feature of 3D printing is low-cost. 3D printing is generally cheaper than the traditional method. In a conventional way, the mold is designed for larger production, and it requires a larger volume to cover the capital investment. As a result, many products are more expensive to the end customers. This makes some products unaffordable to end customers with smaller disposable income. On the other hand, because 3D printing can be designed for each individual, the cost for each type is drastically cheaper. It doesn’t require a building a specific model to carry out a new type. The lower initial investment enables 3D printing to be low-cost even for small volume production.

One example of how low cost benefits the customers is the application in prosthetics. Traditionally, it is costly for customers to get customized prosthetics because of the sunk expenses related to building the model. With 3D printing, the cost of manufacturing prosthetics is much lower which makes prosthetics more affordable to end patients.

Flexibility of Location

The third feature of 3D printing is its flexibility of location. Traditionally, the manufacturing of the products takes place at the manufacturer. Then, depending on the channels, the products would go through several intermediates before it comes to the end customers. With 3D printing, it is possible that the features of the product are transmitted digitally. Changes can be made throughout the supply chain. In the medical context, the end hospital or drug stores can print out the pills at the very last minute depending on the patients need. The fact that it can be carried out at the last step enables more customization opportunity. Since nothing physical has been produced in the middle steps, the costs of switching are much lower compared with the traditional method. The distribution and storing cost can be reduced to a minimal extent. This makes 3D printing more affordable for patients.

One example of how the flexibility of location benefits the customers is pills. The pills can be printed out at drug stores. This makes it very convenient for customers to get the drug they need. In addition, combined with the customization feature of 3D printing, the pills can be customized to each individual so that the individual doesn’t need to take as many pills as they do with the traditional method. The shape of the tablets can also be altered to fit individual consumers better.

Controversies

Although there are many benefits and current application of 3D printing technology, the technology still has some controversial areas. Until those areas are fixed, it would be hard to apply 3D printing technology widely.

Unrealized expectation

The first controversial issue with 3D printing is the unrealized expectation associated with the technology. The current accomplishment of using the 3D printing has been exaggerated by the media, the governments or even researchers. As a result, the general public doesn’t have a clear image of what the technology can achieve and what the technology can’t achieve in the current stage. For instance, the application in bioprinting and organ structure is at the preliminary stage. However, the outcome of the current usage is exaggerated. The consumers are not aware that the technology is not mature enough to be carried out to all cases, and it will require more time and money until the wide application become realized.

Regulation

A second big issue with 3D printing is regulation. While the production becomes simplified with 3D printing, the potential impact of counterfeit products become problematic. This is especially true in the medical field. For instance, if customers buy fake pills, their health conditions would be worse. The government needs to set rules associated with the technology to ensure it is controlled and monitored. The same principle applies to copyright concern. The law needs to define to what extent it is legal to copy a 3D printing model.

Conclusion

The 3D printing technology has benefits in customization, low-cost and flexibility of location. With those features, 3D printing has been making a significant impact in the medicine field. However, certain controversial areas remain unsolved, and it is critical to solve those concerns before the broad application of 3D printing.

Reference

Cave, Holly. “3D-printed pills will provide the solution to one of medicine’s biggest issues” Quartz, 22 Feb. 2019, qz.com/1554685/3d-printing-could-give-you-a-better-pill-to-swallow/
Lee, Ventola. “Medical Applications For 3d Printing: Current and Projected Uses.” U.S. National Library of Medicine, Oct 2014, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4189697/
Giges, Nancy. “Top 5 Ways 3d Printing Is Changing the Medical Field.” ASME, May 2017, www.asme.org/engineering-topics/articles/manufacturing-design/top-5-ways-3d-printing-changing-medical-field
Trounson, Andrew. “Here’s how 3D printing could change the future of medicine.” World Economic Forum, 4 Sep. 2017, www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/09/heres-how-3d-printing-could-change-the-future-of-medicine

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Make-a-thon

This week we got an introduction to the Make-a-thon. The participants of this event go beyond our Digital Making seminar course. Its expanded to Industrial design students from Dr. Deana McDonagh and Jim Kendall’s course, as well as students from Jeff Ginger’s Makerspace. This pre-event to the actual Make-a-thon gave us a general overview of what was going to take place leading up to the weekend long event. Later during the session there was a panel of a few returning experts and a few new ones. Some new faces were Isaac, John, and Steve. They all spoke about their disabilities and the daily frustrations they face. The panel even discussed some of the unique ways they’ve adapted to make the best of their situations.

John’s sock with three attached loops
Joh’s sock with three attached loops

Above is an image of one of John’s sock. I thought this was so simple, yet very effective. Apart of John’s condition is very minimal grip strength. So task like putting on socks or buttoning a shirt is difficult to him. A simple life hack he came up with was sewing loops on the outer edge of his sock, which he can fit around his fingers and pull on the sock. It crazy to think this is all it took and it making a huge difference.

Steve from the panel also gave us an overview of Clark Lindsey, which is a  premier retirement community for today’s accomplished adults. From the presentation he gave I found there to be quite some opportunity in this specific sector. He put a heavy emphasis on fall prevention. Maybe we can design some sort of new innovative thing around this opportunity.

The last part of the Make-a-thon pre-event was a social portion. This time was for everyone to meet and talk amongst each other. Since we’ve been working on our project for sometime  used this portion to to talk with some of the new experts and students to see if any wanted to get involved. We did meet a potential new team member from Jeff’s makerspace seminar. She seemed very interested in what it was Solestice is trying to do. After this It really just turned into a team meeting where we mapped out what we needed to from the session up until the Make-a-thon itself.


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Week 5

This week we were introduced to four guest speakers: Sneha Subramanian from the Illini service dogs, John Hornick author of “ 3D Printing Will Rock the World”, Jeff Ginger from the CU Community Fab lab, and the Illinois Informatics Institute. We began with a brainstorming session with the Illini Service Dogs. We specially were looking at areas of opportunity with improving disabled users independence with service dogs. Ideas bounced around and some really interesting things came from this. After the brainstorming session John Hornick brought so much of the 3D printing industry to our attention. There are so many trends out there, but John emphasised 3 main trends. One of which is that 3D printing spurs innovation, it also increases democratization. Lastly 3D printing is full customizable. I personally really enjoyed all the different innovative projects globally that John mentioned to us.

Jeff from CU community Fab lab gave a very energetic and passionate overview of the lab itself. He told us of all the resources and network we have here on campus. He then went into showing some of his personal projects, all produced at the CU Fablab. He designed this really cool solar power laptop case that charged his laptop. He also created this octopus dongle sort of thing that has every plug in port you could think of. Jeff seems to really be passionate about innovation and I though his overall presentation was inspirational.

After the guest presentation we were given on from our TA Mehmet Aydin on Design Thinking. During his presentation he introduced us to the Design Thinking Modules. You have Inspiration- Ideation- Implementation model. You then have Empathy- Define ( we focus on defining the opportunity from an empathetic standpoint. Then you have Prototype- Test phase. Mehmet also mentioned the idea of diverging, converging and repeating the entire process. You have to just do it. It kind of ties back to last weak guest Mike Henson statement of, “ Fail early, fail often.” The design process is a process of decision making and doing things. You have to ideated on an idea and act on it. Fail and fail and through each failure new innovation ill emerge.

Once Mehmet’s presentation  we broke off into our teams to do a “Stories & Experience” exercise. The task of the exercise was for us to look at our interview Q/A and diverge deeper insight from them.We were able to really figure out our users frustrations, emotions, limitations, pretty much the good and bad. Solicestice in particular, was able implement the experiences of the user to create more value with our potential product. It gave us a framework to further structure of customer discovery and validation of the idea itself.



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Diverge, Converge, Repeat

Class today was quite speaker heavy. Amongst everyone who presented a PowerPoint of sorts, we had 4 different speakers… lots of information to take in, however a few ideas really stood out to me. Initially, I would love to start off with the idea of diverging and then converging. I like to think of this as ideation then analysis. Our readings labeled this process synthesis. We capture our learnings, discover the significance of them, and ultimately create actionable takeaways to move forward with.

One of our TAs presented this concept right before our group activity. It is crucial to let ideas out, having them free-flow and generate one after another. Nonetheless, it is then necessary to analyze these ideas and converge your choices to be able to make a focused decision. Overall, today’s session was an epitome of that. The 4 speakers presented countless ideas and insights, which we then had to prioritize and analyze within the scopes of our projects within the DRES community.  

Accordingly, the two ideas which I converged on by the end of class were customization and accessibility, which yes does seem like the recurring theme for me and my group. John Hornick initially mentioned customization as one of the pillars of 3D printing. Customization allows for individuality and personality to be expressed through utilitarian design, which is an extremely rare combination. Until now, wheelchairs have been viewed as a means to an end, with limited ability for the user to inject his or her own ideation into it.

3D printing encourages individuals to take matters into their own hands and solve problems with an initiative – their own initiative. This individual empowerment is what the final speaker, Jeff Ginger from FabLab honed in on. We were shown the plethora of the design spaces available, however merely 7 were available to the general student population. The rest required some sort of special access. He dubbed this rather useless and inefficient, and frankly I agree. What good are resources if they are not accessible?

Our team looked at this within the scope of wheelchair accessories and creating something which the target community that they will actually want. We want to make it accessible through not only price point, but also desire. This will require analyzing consumer product trends and created marketing campaigns to increase the product awareness once we launch. Design is insignificant if there is not a user desire.