Emergency supplies to fight Covid19 have shown how medicine can benefit from 3D design and printing. A potential to be exploited, thanks to the latest 3D printers capable of imitating the texture, as well as the appearance, of the human body.

Roberto Rizzo creates “Bio3DModel”, the SolidWorld Group division dedicated to the innovations that will revolutionize surgery in the near future.

In crises we must not stop and wait, but start again with greater force. Roberto Rizzo, President of SolidWorld Group, a group specialized in 3D design and printing for companies, is convinced of this and has decided to invest in the creation of Bio3DModel, a new division of the company, based in Florence, specialized in applying the solutions of 3D printing in the medical field. An investment of 5 million euros over 3 years, to bring technologies, software and above all personnel who are able in turn to train doctors to use these new tools.

SolidWorld Group had already been present in the biomedical field for some years, but the desire to create a dedicated headquarters and staff has been consolidated in recent months. Also for “merit” of the Coronavirus. In fact, in recent weeks the companies of the Group, starting from a project of the subsidiary Solid Energy, have created protections for healthcare workers involved in the fight against Covid19, involving their customers, starting with Ferrari, to make their printers available free of charge 3d professional. A chain of solidarity that has highlighted how the world of 3D printing, with its rapid development and high quality of implementation, can bring important solutions to the medical world.

The other reason for starting this new adventure is a technological innovation, which SolidWorld Group hopes to bring to Italy soon, the Stratasys J750 DAP (Digital Anatomy Printer). It is a 3D printer created by the largest manufacturer in the industry (the American Stratasys, in fact) capable of replicating not only the appearance, but also the texture of organs and tissues. It works with photosensitive resins and is able to use different materials at the same time in a single project, with different textures and colors. It can replicate a full hand, or a heart, or a vascular system with veins one and a half millimeters thick. Combined with medical image analysis software (DICOM), it allows you to create, starting from a CT scan or magnetic resonance, a three-dimensional model of the organ on which you need to operate.

There were already printers that replicated human organs, but the realism of this tool is unmatched and could really revolutionize the sector of training and surgical preparation.

Rizzo explains: “We will have an increasingly” patient-specific “preparation: this means that the surgeon will be able to try the surgery on a model exactly equal to the real body, reducing time and the possibility of error. But the training of future doctors will also change, who will be able to train a lot, learning faster, and without using human or animal corpses.”
The new Competence Center in Florence will report directly to one of the companies of the Group, CAD Manager and the contact person will be Giovan Battista Semplici (former administrator of the same) with the collaboration of two important research centers.

On the one hand, the TIP group – Team for Process and Product Innovation of the Department of Industrial Engineering of the University of Florence,which operates through the T3Ddy laboratory, in collaboration with the Meyer Pediatric Hospital, and collaborates with other hospital centers ( Careggi, Siena, Massa…) to offer innovative and personalized care solutions, based on the use of 3D printing and 3D CAD procedures. On the other hand, it collaborates with e-SPpres3D, Spinoff of the EndoCAS (Computer Assisted Surgery) center of the University of Pisa, which develops patient-specific simulators with high anatomical detail.

Rizzo concludes “Thanks to the field work with the operators we want to improve the use of the machine more and more and we hope that 3D printing will become a widespread practice in Italian hospitals. In these days of emergency we have seen how the speed of these machines can help even in absolutely unforeseen situations.”