Barriers to widespread adoption of 3D printing in Medicine

[Dr. Mike]

In this article published on the RSNA website, leaders in the field of Radiology cite cost and training as major barriers to widespread use of 3D printing technologies in medicine. By providing online tutorials on using free software, Embodi3D is trying to reduce these barriers and bring the benefits of 3D printing to the biomedical community.

 

Can anybody else identify barriers to wider adoption?

[mplishka]

Dr. Mike, there's something in the workflow infrastructure that also doesn't lend itself to widespread adoption.  The main question being: Who flags an imaging series, when, for what type of printed part?  It's just not part of the regular flow.  It's almost like a 3d printing triage system needs to be developed (eg, All brain tumor imaging series get sent for segmentation and low fi printing;)    (It's also an interesting phenomenon that as institutions move away from actual films and tactile artifacts (in the ethnographic sense) from the imaging process, we want to create 3d artifacts from the imaging process-just an observation ;-))

 

Timing is another obstacle.  How quickly can something be printed? Does it need to be printed quickly?

 

Finally, 'buy in' is another obstacle.  People see it as cool, but not necessarily valuable.  More white papers need to be out there that show that 3d printing increases surgical throughput, and/or decreases complication rates, etc.  Things need to get past being anecdotal and "out there" and move into the realm of being concrete and "here."

[kopachini]

Collegue of mine, who is interventional radiologist, said to me, why would we use 3D printed model of vessels to educate younger collegues, i trained on pigs... enough said.

Other collegues, mostly old school doctors, are skeptical like for any other new technology, but most of younger collegues are more open minded, so maybe, there's bright future for 3d printing in medicine

 

And last BIG obstacle, is money, like you said. Healthcare system here in Croatia doesn't pay for 3d printed bone grafts as treatment, so we must pay with our own money, and for most of people that is not an option. I try to explain to them that in the beginning we invest with our money in those procedures, but maybe one day it will be routinely covered by our healthcare system.

 

 

V. Kopacin

[Dr. Mike]

1977: Why would anybody want to use a computer?

1994: Why would anybody want to use the Internet?

2016: Why would anybody want to use 3D printing?

 

I'm glad that you and the members of this community are open minded. This technology is the future, and with it we are going to change medicine and patient care for the better.