A 3D printing company could disrupt the children’s medical device sector

For all of the interesting applications for 3D printing in healthcare, its potential for paediatrics is the most compelling, writes Stephanie Baum, Medcity News. It offers a way for medical devices to be customised for children who may have any number of developmental disorders that make simply adapting an adult medical device for kids impractical. A startup that wants to use 3D printing to develop disruptive devices for paediatrics could shake things up.

3D Paediatrics was formed through DreamIt Ventures’ one-year programme with Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia called Open Canvas@CHOP to help companies identify opportunities to commercialise their technology. A second company, called Haystack, wants to make protecting patients’ privacy through electronic medical records easier.

Steve Barsh is the expedition leader at CHOP 3D Paediatrics. He was a managing partner at DreamIt until his own entrepreneurial interests lured him away in 2010. CHOP 3D Paediatrics is made up of several cross-discipline CHOP professionals, who are participating on a part-time basis, along with several outside folks that have come in through DreamIt. It’s exploring several ideas and opportunities in the 3D space, according to Barsh.

He would just as soon the company not be pinned down to any one 3D printing application. After all, it’s in stealth mode and it’s early days. A lot can happen in 12 months. But a look at a couple of regional initiatives in 3D printing in the past six months offers a couple of clues as to the direction the company could take.

A recent example of an idea that grabbed the attention of the 3D printing think tank at CHOP co-founded by anaesthesiologist Jorge Galvez involved intubation devices for anaesthesiologists. The group has been collaborating with University of Pennsylvania engineering students Nicholas McGill and Michael Rivera after they won a challenge by the Society for Technology in Anaesthesia. They successfully used a 3D printer to develop a Williams intubating airway that could be adjusted based on measurements from a CT or MRI scan.

It’s not so difficult to imagine a repository of 3D printing applications created by paediatric physicians across different specialties. After all, one of the goals of the 3D printing think tank is to develop devices across disciplines such as cardiology; anaesthesiology; ear, nose and throat; and interventional radiology. In a different approach, the company could whittle down a pipeline of ideas to a manageable number and figure out the best way forward.

Earlier this year Galvez told MedCity News: “There’s a lot of low-hanging fruit in this area, such as customized prosthetics… The challenge is not about using the printer, but having the knowledge and expertise to know what the needs of each specialty are."