Additive manufacturing for personalised medicine
Siemens AM solutions for medical and pharmaceutical industries
Additive manufacturing, or 3D printing, has revolutionised many industrial sectors, including healthcare. Its application in the medical industry now makes it possible to meet the specific needs of personalised medicine, by offering solutions tailored to each patient. As described in this article, Computer Aided Design (CAD) tools play a crucial role in the development of innovative medical devices by responding to the genetic and genomic diversity of patients.
The challenges of personalised medicine
Personalised medicine represents a major advance in patient care, particularly for diseases and medical treatments, thanks to scientific research. Based on the genetic characteristics of individuals and diseases, personalised medicine makes it possible to offer tailor-made treatments, optimising the effectiveness of care for each patient.
Here are the challenges associated with this revolutionary approach:
- Physiognomic adaptation: each treatment must be adapted according to the patient's genetic and physiognomic data. In medicine, additive manufacturing helps to design personalised treatments based on patients' health.
- Biocompatible materials: additive manufacturing makes it possible to take advantage of patient data and research to print biological tissues, a real treatment option for diseases such as cancer. Tumour genomics analyses the specific genetic characteristics of a tumour. Unlike genetics, which is used to assess the risk of developing cancer, genomics is used to personalise the treatment of a cancer that has already been diagnosed. 3D bioprinting is therefore emerging as a new treatment method for diseases such as cancer.
- Improved treatment: personalised printing of medical devices such as prostheses and implants tailored to the patient offers optimum comfort and treatment.
- Regulatory and ethical challenges: device certification, clinical validation and patient safety remain major challenges in medicine. Additive manufacturing opens up new research prospects, particularly in the development of medical treatments for cancer. In addition, personalised medicine is helping to reduce hospitalisation and healthcare costs, while enabling precision treatment. This brings us to the next section.
Personalised precision medicine
All these issues are essential information and data to be taken into account when using new technologies to treat all types of disease and health problems using additive manufacturing. Intervention at the genomic level of an individual implies precision diagnosis. This personalised care is made possible by additive manufacturing and its new precision technologies. Discover different Siemens solutions for the medical and pharmaceutical industry right here:
- Custom-made prostheses and implants: in France, many patients benefit from custom-made prostheses and implants for personalised care. This is made possible by 3D printing of medical devices designed on the basis of information about the patient's pathology. Among the major leaders in the sector, Siemens, with its Simcenter simulation software, has established itself as a revolutionary solution for prosthetic engineering. NX makes it possible to manufacture lightweight, affordable and realistic-looking external prostheses, all in record time.
- Digital twins for organs: precise 3D modelling of patients' organs enables doctors to simulate operations. This precision predictive medicine reduces risks and improves surgical results. Through its Simcenter portfolio, Siemens is able to simulate airflow to help diagnose and plan surgery, and thus offer respiratory implants that are perfectly suited to the patient's physiognomy.
- Regenerative medicine: research into bio-molecular and cellular sciences is now gathering sufficient data to enable additive manufacturing to be integrated into regenerative medicine. 3D printing of living cells opens the way to tissue repair and the creation of personalised biological grafts. Siemens is thus using additive manufacturing to regenerate a new organ from a patient's own cells in order to cure serious diseases such as cancer.
- Rapid production: using an additive manufacturing solution can reduce modelling time by 50%. In the medical sector, additive manufacturing makes it possible to rapidly produce essential parts, such as heart valves or orthopaedic splints. By offering unique geometric possibilities that are essential for precision medicine, additive manufacturing enables the creation of organic shapes adapted to residual limbs and the direct use of the patient's 3D mesh. The socket, the key interface between the patient and the prosthesis, can thus be adjusted virtually on the basis of 3D scans, ensuring optimum comfort.
- Future prospects: The printing of functional organs, advances in biomaterials and the democratisation of 3D medical technologies are opening up immense prospects for healthcare. 3D printing offers the possibility of creating unprecedented shapes (unlike subtractive and formative methods), opening the way in particular to molecular printing of medicines.
Additive manufacturing is revolutionising the healthcare industry. By integrating advances in genomic analysis, molecular sciences and predictive medicine, it enables us to improve care and patient comfort, and reduce costs and treatment times. This approach also extends to the pharmaceutical industry, where digitalisation and automation are speeding up the marketing of medicines tailored to individual needs. Thanks to innovations from companies like Siemens, tomorrow's medicine relies on greater personalisation and optimised use of healthcare data.