Fried Vancraen, CEO of Materialise has called upon stakeholders for agreement of common standards of clinical, economical and patient benefits of medical 3D printing. He stated that success can only be achieved with globally accepted set of guidelines helping the medical 3D printing industry to better persuade physicians, hospitals, and policy makers to adopt this increasingly valuable technology.

CADskills, a medical device startup from Belgium uses 3D Printing Technology to produce patient-specific implants for craniomaxillofacial (CMF) and neurosurgery patients, including its innovative AMSJI, a new generation of subperiosteal implant for extreme maxillary atrophy. To counter bone atrophy, AMSJI eliminates the bone grafting process and its months of recovery time and the surgery takes around 1 hour. These Titanium implants are 3D Printed using Mimics Innovation Suite (MIS) from Materialise.

A report was published by the Belgian Health Care Knowledge Center (KCE), identifying 3 main types of 3D printed medical devices – Customizable, Standard and Custom-made. The report addresses risks and challenges of this technology and drafts an operational framework for these devices, over viewing their effectiveness, safety, cost, and legal issues.

Researchers at Ghent University have developed a 3D bioprinted model of a scaffold from PLA that more accurately replicates the size, porosity and mechanical and biochemical properties of peritoneal metastasis to treat Cancer. Cancerous cells are then cultivated for testing after which they implanted their model in the peritoneal cavities of a mice to test its working in vivo.