Digital Design and Manufacturing

3D Printing in Healthcare is Data-Driven Design

3-D printing allows designers and doctors to join forces. What new solutions will this alliance produce?

3-D printing technology holds an immense potential to drive and support advances in healthcare. Unlocking that promise, however, will require that designers and doctors learn to work together. This collaboration has often proved challenging. In design, novelty and risk can be highly desirable. In medicine, however, proven methods are preferred, and new technologies are treated with skepticism.

Being a designer with three medical doctors in my family, I am keenly aware of this difference in mindset. I am also optimistic that it can be overcome.

The launch this month of the Mohammed Bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences (MBRU) Design Lab manifests a strong desire in the Middle East for medicine and design to join in developing new healthcare solutions, and reinforces the case for optimism. Given our ambition to become a global 3-D printing hub, the solutions developed by this lab will undoubtedly be influenced by the medical potential of 3-D printing. But questions remain. How do we help doctors trust this new technology? How can we educate designers and doctors in the future so they can better work together? And what will be the output of that partnership?

Digital Design of Microstructures at the Voxel scale

Prior to joining the Dubai Institute of Design and Innovation (DIDI), I led the Voxel Harvest research project at the SUTD Digital Manufacturing Design Centre, Singapore, in collaboration with designer Nathan Kiatkulpiboone. This project introduced a new manufacturing platform that links patient data, medical diagnosis, and design tools to create custom medical orthotics. The voxel 3D printing field has the capability of weaving many different materials together at a fine resolution. With support from Stratasys, we developed digital design tools which harness that capability to yield medical products with properties that, before, were unthinkable. Once perfected, this will open up a new world of custom bio-medical and wearable design.

Older methods of 3-D printing employed a single material, and used files which described only the object surface. In contrast, the voxel is a unit for printing with multiple materials while also precisely specifying the object’s interior, using “stacks” of image slices similar to an MRI, but in reverse.

Just like how millions of pixels are organized on digital display screens to create a high-resolution image, voxels can be arranged in intricate patterns to control how a 3D printed object will perform.

By programming voxel data sets, we can develop 3D printing on a more personal level, having the ability to add microscopic features and textures that can help control elements such as pressure and temperature. We can also add fine-scaled voids within objects to incorporate sensors that record patient data, which can then be transmitted back to the doctor to instigate a personal yet data-based feedback loop. As a proof of concept, we performed a test case that combined specific patient data with best practice diagnoses from a podiatrist to program a bio-device for the patient’s recurring injury. We defined a behavioral program based on factors of shape, micro-structure, texture, and inflation. A new workflow emerged where a new class of custom products could be created through digital manufacturing.

Projects like Voxel Harvest demonstrate how a collaboration between design and medicine could improve patient experience. The level of customization we achieved, alongside powerful data sets and information technology systems, has the potential to change the landscape of 3-D printing and drive life-changing tech developments.

There is still a need for better 3-D printing materials to meet manufacturing and medical standards. In spite of this, voxel print is already being applied to surgical training and planning. As the demands of surgery and surgical education shift and intensify, simulation has started to play a vital role in practice and preparation. Improving the realism, specificity, and accessibility of those simulations will improve training and planning, and will ultimately improve surgical outcomes. Using MRI scans as data inputs, voxel print can be used to produce highly realistic physical simulations of both typical and specific patient anatomies. Pushing manufacturing standards, proving the healthcare applications, and integrating with medical education are all areas where MBRU’s design lab could spearhead advances.

Innovation at the Intersection of Research, Industry and Teaching

At the Dubai Institute of Design and Innovation, one of our goals is to arm our students with the technical and soft skills to bridge previously unconnected domains. DIDI recently signed an MOU with the Mohammed Bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences (MBRU), whose mission is to set a new benchmark with innovation in healthcare. We have also signed an MOU with Jumbo 3-D Manufacturing in Jebel Ali — demonstrating our commitment at DIDI to multi-disciplinary collaboration. Partnerships like these give DIDI students direct exposure to groundbreaking research, new applications, and emerging industries and developments in the tech and healthcare fields.

For students in the Middle East these initiatives build a greater awareness of the future of 3-D printed healthcare design. Such approaches are destined to transform a variety of critical fields, from bio-metrics to sports medicine, prosthetic design, and bio-devices, and ultimately healthcare delivery and human performance.

N O T E S

1 Patel SV, Kiatkulpiboone, N, (2019). Voxel Harvest: Multi-Sensory Design of a Biomedical Device from Image-based Input, Design Modelling Symposium Berlin, Berlin Germany Springer