Revolutionising the Medical World with 3D Printing
The medical world where treatments, organs and devices are an integral part could be revolutionised by the vast promises of 3D printing. With precision, speed and a major slash in cost, the way we treat and manage the health of our bodies will never be the same. Here’s the story of Five Fingers who are set to make their mark in this field.
Q. What have you innovated and what problems are you solving?
A. Five Fingers is generating human anatomical model for various medical condition, from patient CT scan or MRI scan data, using 3D printing technology. This will help aspiring medical students to understand and practice on a medical condition thus, improving the knowledge and skills of aspiring surgeons. This in-turn improve quality of surgery and reduce patient’s trauma and time in operation theatre, thus benefit both patients and doctors.
Q. What prompted you to choose 3D printing?
A. India need more skilled surgeons to serve its own population and the world. This country is becoming a hub for affordable medical surgery. Thus, 3D printing will be next game changer in healthcare. 3D printing has huge potential in India, but it needs to be encouraged by government, by reducing the custom duty on 3D printers.
Q. Why do you provide training on 3D printing? Isn’t it creating competition for yourself?
A. Not at all! There are very few skilled people working on 3D printing technology, today. Having more trained people will provide benefit to a larger number of people, which we are committed to. and come to think of it, it will help us to expand faster too. We cannot service all the hospitals alone. We need more hands and franchises going forward to serve a larger market.
Q. Can you share one interesting incident from your innovation journey with our
readers?
A. During the development of anatomical models using 3D printing, we learnt that there are many ways to achieve same results. We were making some 3D printed models with support. The support structure was not getting removed easily from the main part giving a bad finish to final product. So we thought over it and paused the printer at a point and filled the hollow part with sugar powder during printing, which is easily soluble in water. and that’s was it! We had a smooth finish of the product. The interesting part is that we learnt this technique by watching videos of baking cakes, where sugar structures are used for decoration. This is an unconventional method of generating support method for 3D printing, but it worked for us!
Q. Where are you heading next with your innovation?
A. We have plans to embed intelligence in our 3D printed part, to provide instant feedback to our end user. The challenge, at the same time, is to keep anatomical models as close to original and not deviate much from the standard procedure followed in using these models. So, we are researching to find solutions from other parts of life for the same.
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