IDEA Ingeniería and IA Manufacturing, aware of the healthcare sector

IDEA Ingeniería and IA Manufacturing, aware of the healthcare sector

Spain’s People’s Party has presented a resolution in the Congress of Deputies to introduce 3D printing departments in Spanish hospitals to produce tissues, organs and prostheses.

Pedro Cuellar, Digital Transformation Manager at IDEA Ingeniería, met with Teodoro García, promoter of the initiative, in order to show the various opportunities presented by additive manufacturing and 3D printing in the healthcare sector.

Additive manufacturing applied to medicine helps to treat serious diseases and diagnoses. It is a new production concept that consists of converting a 3D file into a physical object, such as a replica of a pelvis, by adding plastic, metal, paper and other materials layer by layer. This technology reduces intermediate manufacturing processes and makes it up to 90% faster.

The promoter of this initiative, Teodoro García, says that this technology saves up to two hours when performing a pelvis operation if the doctor had a 3D replica of the patient’s bone beforehand.

This proposal aims to promote additive manufacturing and 3D printing in hospitals and the healthcare sector in Spain, which would facilitate the creation of all kinds of anatomical models and life-size reproductions of the human body, as well as the development of implants adapted to each patient, plates for the treatment of fractures, surgical guides and customised instruments, among other things.

Among the benefits of additive manufacturing in the healthcare sector, Teodoro García says that the geometric complexity does not make the process more expensive because “the actual reproduction of a part is not very difficult when compared to conventional methods, which have to overcome certain manufacturing challenges such as slenderness, interior hollowing, and irregular shapes by means of expensive processes”

Furthermore, customisation does not entail additional costs as the system makes it possible to manufacture products at no extra cost, regardless of whether a specific number of identical or different parts have to be produced.

Additive manufacturing applied to the healthcare field facilitates the competitive manufacture of short series of products without increasing their cost. In addition, it allows parts to be easily modified throughout the patient’s life, to adapt them to their personal circumstances.

In its resolution, the People’s Party (PP) points out that these features represent a real breakthrough in the design of medical devices and a vast creative freedom to manufacture any object created by the human imagination.

In Spain, the PP notes that the 3D printer manufacturing company Abax Innovation Technologies, signed an agreement with the Foundation for Biomedical Research of the Hospital Universitario de la Paz and the Radiophysics and Radioprotection Service to apply 3D printing to the medical sector.

“We can affirm that the application of additive manufacturing represents a great advance in people’s health and in the understanding of the human body,” says García, acknowledging that this technology needs a major boost to overcome all the obstacles preventing its full application in the healthcare sector.

The Resolution of the People’s Party calls on the government to promote the necessary measures to boost additive manufacturing in the healthcare sector, promote innovation and understanding in this area. As well as to foster and support SMEs that promote additive manufacturing and 3D printing in Spain. In addition to facilitating the establishment of in-house 3D printing services in hospitals to support healthcare professionals in carrying out surgical interventions.

Furthermore, to promote the training of engineers who are experts in additive manufacturing and 3D printing to bring them into this new support service for the healthcare sector in hospitals.