Bringing 3D printing to the next level for sustainable healing

Three dimensional or “3D printing” is an additive manufacturing process that has been around for a while now – but is still guaranteed to attract attention. It produces a physical object from a digital design, and it’s been creating a buzz in the healthcare industry since the 1990s when dental implants and custom prosthetics took off.

While there are many different types of 3D printing available, we at Osteopore have been able to harness the technological advantage that 3D printing has over traditional manufacturing techniques. This has enabled us to create a microstructure that is representative of native bone while meeting gross geometrical needs of the reconstruction area and facilitates technology differentiation from other medical implant providers.

Specifically, we harness the body’s regenerative capacity to rebuild lost tissues and the bioresorbable materials in our implants leverage the combined technologies of tissue engineering, regenerative medicine, and 3D printing techniques.

3D printing technology allows us to make world-leading regenerative implants. Our bioresorbable implant is the first of its kind to be successfully developed and commercialized for surgical use, and we see this technology as the way of the future for healthcare.

When used appropriately, we find the solutions created with 3D printing regularly outperform traditional implant methods in terms of design and associated long-term healthcare costs.

3D printing allows the creation of complex geometries that copy the shape and function of natural bone and allows efficient productization particularly in customised implants.

Given the complex nature of bone microarchitecture, it is not a matter of course that production can happen at cost effective scale – and 3D manufacturing gives us that option.

With improvements to technology, we can go down the path of automation, producing our implants around-the-clock and even remotely; there is a compelling commercial industrial argument for the technology alongside medical rationale and uniqueness of what is possible.

But most importantly for us, 3D printing is actually reshaping what implants can do, and how patients can be treated – often patient comfort and experience during recovery is improved.

Additive manufacturing’s role in the medical field continues to develop and mature, and while in some medical specialties the hype of 3D printing has gone down – the true value that 3D printing can provide to this field will be recognized once the industry understands and accepts the technology and its benefits.

The compelling argument for the technology is that it has the unique combination of being able to produce something as specific and particular as the biomimetic architecture at Osteopore, as well as its scalability at the same time.

From our perspective, 3D printing is consistent and reproducible. It allows us to be in a position that suggests we have considered the manufacturing of products at scale and that we can produce them in a way that meets quality standards.

So, let us look at a breakdown of 3D printing from Osteopore’s perspective.

Choice of 3D Printing

We use Fused Deposition Modelling, or Fused Filament Fabrication as it has been more recently called. This method of 3D printing is so far one of the most reliable and reproducible among other techniques, and hence is suited to producing our parts and design. In addition, the microstructure that we incorporate into our products can be consistently reproduced in good quality using this method. Also, the physical properties of parts produced by this method of 3D printing fit well with the needs of our application area.