Additive Manufacturing-3D Printing in Healthcare

Healthcare plays a major role in government spending, not least because of the world's increasingly ageing population.

The patient is now at the heart of the healthcare system, hence the need to increase personalized treatment through a multi-disciplinary approach combining medicine and engineering.

This concept of customized care is not new, but has gained momentum over the last twenty years, notably through the development of additive manufacturing, also known as 3D printing. Additive manufacturing is defined by the NF ISO/ASTM 52900 as "the process of assembling materials to manufacture parts from 3D model data, usually layer by layer, as opposed to subtractive and shaped manufacturing methods". [BM 7 017] . The term "3D printing" has been popularized and has become generic to encompass all additive technologies in the general public, although it originally refers to "technology by deposition of a material by means of a print head, nozzle or other printing technology" according to the standard NF ISO/ASTM 52900 . The versatility of this technology enables the manufacture of solutions adapted to the patient's morphology, for which parts are designed by superimposing materials. Several additive manufacturing technologies are available, depending on the type of raw material used: powder, liquid or solid (in filament form). Bioprinting will not be dealt with in this article, as it is still an unfamiliar technology, but this subject has already been extensively discussed in another Techniques de l'Ingénieur article. [RE 268] .

3D printing was initially used for rapid prototyping [BM 7 017] , but since around 2010 it has been used in the medical sector (orthodontics, orthopedics, cardiovascular and maxillofacial) to produce functional, customized parts in small production runs. However, mastering the technology remains a complex task, which is why medical professionals who use additive manufacturing generally call on the services of manufacturers. However, some hospitals are starting to integrate small machines into their structures for simple uses (easy-to-master technologies with low-cost machines).

Given the multiple factors involved in its development, this article takes a cross-disciplinary approach to the state-of-the-art in additive manufacturing of medical devices. The aim is to provide the notions necessary for its...