Healthcare Technology Featured Article

September 30, 2020

Safety, Accuracy, and Speed: 3D Technology in Medicine




World medicine has been actively introducing the latest technologies and breakthrough developments by scientists since 2010. The use of 3D printing in domestic clinical practice is still fragmented, but the interest of the public, the state, and doctors in promising technology is increasing every year. So how do technologies change the daily activities of medics and the lives of patients? What is healthcare ready to offer you today? Let’s take a closer look at the question.

1. Preoperative Preparation Makes Surgery Safer

Medicine is perhaps the most high-risk industry that still does not rehearse before the start of the “game.” Pilots practice take-offs and landings on a realistic simulator. Football players have several pre-match pieces of training, where they repeatedly run gears and combinations to help them score the ball. Thus, NativeCasinos Canada spends months researching and analyzing information about online casinos and gambling before delivering it to their customers. There is nothing similar in medicine.

Training in the healthcare sector is based on the principle: you see the operation one or several times, perform the same operation yourself and then train another specialist. How can a doctor hone his skill in conducting complex operations to remove brain tumors? How to rehearse operations for heart defects or rare childhood diseases (congenital diaphragmatic hernia or hydrocephalus), when the error can become fatal? This is where 3D technologies will help.

2. Two Operations - One Incision

Three-dimensional technologies can help to deal with the above difficulty. 3D designers and engineers use operational information about the state of the human body in the form of a set of images of internal organs. These are computer and magnetic resonance imaging that recreates complex physical objects on its basis.

3. 3d-models for Surgical Intervention

Printed on a professional 3D printer, models of bones and organs, nerve and blood vessels of the patient’s brain serve as an imitation of a real fragment of the human body. Surgeons use these models for preoperative practice and planning. The doctor works out the course of the intervention and surgical procedures until he finds the optimal way to solve the problem. Therefore, he goes to surgery with a detailed understanding of the clinical case and a clear plan of action.

4. Anatomical Accuracy

Modern medical 3D products - orthoses, mouth guards, and hearing aids - are technologically united by one thing: personalization of production. The product is created on the basis of a 3D scan of the patient, which accurately reproduces the individual anatomical features. Thus, doctors increase the effectiveness of treatment for a particular person, and patients receive the most comfortable products.

5. Save Time

Speed, high accuracy, and the ability to produce a medical product unique to each patient are key features of 3D scanning, modeling, and printing technologies. They allow you to quickly create high-quality medical products without increasing costs but by simplifying the production cycle.

For example, the production technology of traditional models of hearing aids is a long and laborious process that requires high skill and does not exclude the additional work of a wizard in fitting the case to the patient. With the advent of 3D technologies, for the preparation of an individual in-ear hearing aid, instead of 12 stages, only 4 are required. Thus, you need 4 hours instead of 3 days to complete the entire fitting process.



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