3D printed cast
The rise of new technologies and the change it brings to our lives. 3D printing is not a new thing any more, but it will be fun to observe how it will bring new products and solutions into our everyday life. One of those are 3D printed casts.
From using wooden splints that have been recorded already in ancient Egypt and Greece and have been probably in use millennia before, to the products used now. The idea of the plaster cast as we know it was first observed in Turkey in the beginning of the 19th century, from there it took another century to produce the first commercial bandages in Germany.
Are we are currently witnessing the next generation of casts, where we don’t see just an incremental improvement, but a jump to a new plain of casting. The 3D printed cast can offer so much more and now we have to wait for the scalable and affordable scanning and printing equipment to follow the trend, so we can get the benefits of the economy of scale and get the casts printed in every hospital.
Here are some of the most known companies working in this field:
- ActivArmor (available in the US and it is covered by most insurance providers)
- Osteoid Medical Cast
- NovaCast
- Cortex Cast
We will be guinea pigs in the upcoming years and choose the array of next gen products (probably a lot of our choosing will be influenced by algorithms, but that is a topic for another time). What is something that you thing needs a big jump to the next level and not just a small improvement?
More 3D inspirations: