Having a 3D printing capability on-site is helping hospitals expedite the development of medical solutions for patients, according to Mayo Clinic Senior Engineer Victoria Sears.
Speaking on the latest Innovators on Innovators instalment of the Additive Insight podcast, Sears noted how having 3D printing capacity on-site enabled healthcare professionals to provide medical products within a shorter amount of time.
Joined by Nicole McMinn, a Biomedical Engineer at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Sears provided detail on the additive manufacturing workflows inside Mayo Clinic, noting how the ability to directly interface with surgeons, physicians and patients helps to provide a better service.
“I fortunately have access to the operating rooms to observe surgeries as a designer which allows me to see what parts of surgery are the sticking points and be able to suggest new ideas,” Sears said. “All of the physicians we work with are encouraging us to come down to the OR. They want us to because they know that they’ve been in that position where one of us is observing and we’re able to see, ‘would this be easier if we were able to maybe create this device to help you guide this portion of [the procedure]?’ And they’re like, ‘yes, we would love for you to try that.’”
Sears is based at Mayo Clinic’s headquarters in Rochester, Minnesota where the nonprofit healthcare organisation has placed a significant focus on the application of 3D printing technology. Since bringing the technology in house, Mayo Clinic has negotiated procedures where babies have been born with critical organs outside of their body, complete facial reconstructions after severe gunshot wounds, and the manipulation of bony and soft tissues to create a more feminine appearance of the face.
Having worked on the latter project, Sears explained how being able to quickly iterate the design of a surgical aid allowed Mayo Clinic to better tackle a complex procedure. McMinn also has plenty of experience developing simulation models for challenging surgical procedures. She too detailed how 3D printing helps her and her team navigate fast-paced environments that see doctors regularly request multiple modifications on a device that will better inform how they approach a surgical procedure.
Similar to the Mayo Clinic, the 3D printing capacity at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center is housed within the Department of Radiology, once again allowing pivotal dialogue and collaboration between radiologists, biomedical engineers and doctors.
“It’s really important for people who don’t have as much time on their schedule to come up and take a look at our segmentation because there’s room for error,” McMinn said. “It’s very helpful for them to come up and double check our work, especially when there are complicated segmentations that need to be done or determining tumour margins where sometimes you’ll need to overlay an MRI scan which, at least with the software we use here, it’s a lot harder to do an MRI or offset that with the CT scan and make sure you’re appropriately segmenting the margins of that tumour.”
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Exhibit at the UK's definitive and most influential 3D printing and additive manufacturing event, TCT 3Sixty.
