Just a couple of years ago Fanny, a 16-year-old Swedish teenager, was facing a life in a wheelchair. She suffers from a rare degenerative condition causing skeletal deformities. Fortunately now Fanny is on her way to recovery, with the help of a customised 3D Printed hip implant. Check the video below for details:
A new 3D printed knee implant could change the way we move in older age, helping people to achieve a longer, healthier life.
Throughout our lives the bending and contorting of our limbs wears down our body’s means of protecting sensitive joints. Nowhere is that more true than in our knees. Every time you bend down to pick something up your knee experiences tremendous pressure. Over time the cartilage and ligaments that protect and actuate your knee degrade, eventually leaving you in a position where moving your leg becomes painful.
I was fortunate to be raised on the white sand beaches of Kaua’i. Shortly after high school, I lost my leg to a large Tiger Shark. It was a blessing, though, as it brought me to photography, which I learned during my downtime when I was injured. I love everything about capturing images. Finding the light, building relationships, and seeking out the unordinary is what I base my passions on. In my spare time, I still surf (now with a prosthetic leg) and am active in shark conservation.
University of Toronto professor Matt Ratto and his Critical Making lab are helping an international charity apply recent advances in 3D scanning and 3D printing technology to help Ugandan children receive inexpensive prosthetic limbs quickly.
Only a few years ago, the simple act of feeding herself or hugging her mother would have eluded a child born like Hannah. But in the age of 3D printing one little girl has discovered that anything is possible. Hannah was born with a condition called arthrogryposis, a disorder characterized by severe joint and muscle weakness, and she has had little to no ability to move or interact with the world around her without help.
Mick Ebeling is making a deep impact with a very simple approach: Help one, help many. Founder of Not Impossible Labs, a nonprofit that creates tech solutions for real-world problems, Ebeling was moved by the 2012 TIME story about a Sudanese amputee whose arms were lost in a bomb attack. To protect himself from the blast 14-year-old Daniel Omar hugged a tree, which shielded his body from the explosion though exposed his arms.
Many of you will have seen, and likely been inspired by, the developments of the Robohand project over the course of this year. It has served as a bench mark in many ways, not least in that it has prompted an ever more common occurrence in the world of 3D printing, where people from different walks of life have collaborated to provide something unique, something once unfeasible and cost-prohibitive, for a person in need. Another uplifting story along these lines centres around a little girl in Huntsville, Alabama, who has been the beneficiary and muse for individuals from Zero Point Frontiers attempting to create a workable substitute for the four missing fingers on her left hand. The toddler, Kate Berkholtz can be seen in a local news report playing and tumbling around with her brother in a Huntsville gym for children. She appears quite ambivalent to the fact that she was born without four digits, but Angel Hundley knew she could provide succor for the rambunctious toddler. Angel’s husband, Jason Hundley, is president of the engineering company Zero Point Frontiers and had recently witnessed a presentation from an intern, Shawn Betts, detailing possibilities with 3D printing. Kate’s parents, shunning surgical options, embraced the idea of using 3D printed models and prototypes as substitute digits for their daughter.
Peking University Third Hospital in Beijing is in the process of conducting human clinical trials with titanium 3D printed spinal inserts. “We started clinical trials on 3D printed implants late last year, and now we have used dozens of such implants for more than 50 patients,” said Dr. Liu Zhongjun who is spearheading the project.
A group of biomedical engineers from Jhpiego and Momo Scientific have developed a device designed to fight cervical cancer. Cervical cancer is responsible for about 275,000 deathseach year, with most of the deaths occurring in developing countries. The new device, called a “CryoPop,” was designed in a CAD program and prototyped on a 3D printer.
Scientists have developed a method of 3D printing new skin cells onto burn wounds at Wake Forest University’s Military Research Center. The method is far superior to traditional skin grafts because regular grafts require skin from a donor site somewhere on the patient’s body. Taking skin from a donor site is painful and sometimes the patients do not even have enough unburned skin to transplant.
The BIOFABRIS is a National Institute of S&T in Biomanufacturing of multidisciplinary,
located at the Chemical Engineering Campus of UNICAMP, character that aims to integrate computational tools, synthesis and development of new biomaterials and application of engineering techniques to obtain biomedical devices (prostheses and orthopedic orthoses) and substitutes for live biological tissues or defective or missing human organs.