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#3dMedAu18 Recap- Day 1

It’s been a month since #3dMedAu18, and my goodness it’s been one hell of a ride. Thank you to everyone who made the weekend, especially those of you who made the journey from overseas or interstate. Thank you also to all conference attendees who submitted such positive feedback. After a well earned rest, we’ll be working hard to make #3dMed19 even bigger and better!

In the aftermath of this year’s conference, we’ve managed to inspire the next generation of innovators, and new collaborations have sprouted. Mission accomplished.

For those of you who missed out, here’s a handy recap of the two, very full days. Let’s start with Day 1.

Medical 3D Printing Workshop

Day 1 opened with a hands on anatomical modelling and 3D printing workshop, which took participants through how to turn patient imaging into a physical 3D printed model. Participants were then able to take the model that they made home with them.

Places for this workshop were booked out within an hour of being advertised! Despite being fully booked, we had a large number of drop ins coming by to check out what we were up to. Fear not, we will be running more workshops like this in the future. Watch this space.


A big shout out to Thinglab for collaborating with
us to make the workshop possible!

Session: Clinical Applications

Our first session chaired by A/Prof Tracie Barber, was opened with Dr Elizabeth Sigston from Monash Health sharing the progress her team had made on 3D printed titanium mandibular implants for head and neck cancer surgery.


This was followed by Mr Paul D’Urso’s experiences of 680 spine cases at Anatomics.


Dr Hossein Mokhtarzadeh, freshly returned to the University of Melbourne from Boston, took us through the personalised load models that he worked on as part of the Framingham Heart Study to prevent spinal fractures.

https://twitter.com/JasamineCB/status/1050903025617756161

Next we were treated to Dr Cynthia Wong of the QUT Biofabrication and Tissue Morphology Group, speaking on the impressive bioprinting advances made by their team.

Mr Ron Jithoo from Alfred Health took us through his end user perspective of 3D printed spinal titanium implants.


Finally, the session wrapped up with Dr Raf Ratinam from Monash Health presenting his qualitative survey data on Hand Surgeons’ attitudes towards 3D printing.


Special thanks to Cynthia for making the
trip down to Melbourne to share her lab’s work!

Session: Med Tech Industry

Our second session opened with Dr Tim Hughes showing off his very cool biocompatible elastic photocurable resins produced by his team at CSIRO. We’ve got to get our hands on some of that resin, Tim!

https://twitter.com/JasamineCB/status/1050943787306954752

Next up, Dr Darpan Shidid gave us an insight into RMIT’s successes with 3D printed medical implants, as well as a drool worthy sneak peak into their facilities!


Dr Carmine Onofrillo from St Vincent’s Melbourne’s BioFab3D Lab described the progress their group had made with the much celebrated BioPen.


We were introduced to our international speaker Jen Owen from Enabling the Future, and treated to an insider’s view on how the global movement started.

https://twitter.com/JasamineCB/status/1050955651554267136


Finally, Dr Blake Cochran (and his radiologically accurate sidekick!) took us through the highs and lows of creating a 3D printing filament for X-ray and CT phantoms.


Session: Engaging Patients and the Community

This session opened up with our patient
representative Roger Jones sharing his experience on his 3D printed model which
was used by the team to plan his surgery. Thanks for coming Roger!


Next Jen Owen was back for her second talk for the day, sharing how e-NABLE’s story of community powered iterative prosthesis development.


Twitterati Dr Eric Levi enlightened us on the Dos and Don’ts of social media, as well as highlighting its power in reaching out to both patients and new collaborators.


Finally the high energy Day 1 was concluded with our own Dr Jas Coles-Black taking the audience through our experiences in setting up a 3D printing lab in a public hospital.


Stay tuned for our recap of Day 2!



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#3dMedAu18 Metrics

OK, we know it’s not a competition but, hey, seriously? Thanks @Symplur for the data — and thanks to all our wonderful convenors, conference organisers, and student volunteers.

Thanks to our 3dMed team who have pulled off an amazing conference.

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Countdown to #3dMedAu18 — Speaker Profile: Jen Owen

Jen Owen – Founder of enablingthefuture.org (Photo supplied)

With five whole days left to go before the 3dMed Australia Conference, we are proud to welcome Jen Owen to Australia in order to speak at #3dMedAu18.

Based in Washington state, Jen is founder of the ground-breaking Enable the Future project (e-NABLE) — a philanthropic, multinational, collaborative and grassroots-driven effort to make open-source, self-assembled designs for prosthetic hands and arms which can be 3d-printed at the point of care. This project inspired Austin Health prosthetist Jake Eadie to develop a 3d-printed prosthesis program as part of 3dMedLab.

The 3dMed Australia Conference 2018 is dedicated to exploring the use of 3D technologies in Medicine including 3d-printing, 3d-modelling, virtual reality and augmented reality. Register now to attend, media enquiries welcome.

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RMIT 3D Heals Melbourne Video Recap

Did you miss our recent event at RMIT’s Additive Manufacturing Facility with our partners at 3D Heals? Don’t worry — we’ve got you covered. The video is now online at our YouTube channel… plus don’t forget to subscribe for more updates, including highlights of our upcoming #3dMedAu18 Conference in 9 days time!


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3D Printing for Quality and Safety in Healthcare

Can you see us in the background???

The @3dMedLab team was super pumped to present our work at the International Forum on Quality and Safety in Healthcare held at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre this week. Supported by the BMJ, Institute for Healthcare Improvement, Safer Care Victoria and many others, we were proud to represent Austin Health by sharing how we use 3D Printing to deliver personalised and patient-centred healthcare.

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RMIT 3dHeals Melbourne Event


The RMIT Additive Manufaturing Team.

Yesterday evening we had the pleasure of presenting at a 3D printing event hosted by RMIT’s Additive Manufacturing Precinct and organised by Sarah Fink and 3dHeals. It started with a tour of the facility followed by an introduction by Prof Ivan Cole on RMIT’s research strategies including some fantastic work in materials technology and lattice design for medical implants.

Don’t bother asking why.
We don’t know.

Jason Chuen from our very own UniMelb Austin Health 3dMedLab was up next to share his insights on Medical Applications of 3D Printing including anatomical visualisation, surgical planning, procedural simulation and teaching — together with an emphasis on the need for more cross-disciplinary work between clinicians and engineers.

Next up was Paul D’Urso, founder of Melbourne 3D printing startup Anatomics was next with more information on how just-in-time manufacturing and personalised manufacturing can save transport and operating theatre resources.

This was followed by Neil Anderson, CEO of Oventus Medical who have developed and commercialised a personalised oral mandibular advancement and airway appliance for obstructive sleep apnoea (what a mouthful! 😉) to replace standard CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) masks. Together with CSIRO’s Lab 22 they used 3D printing throughout the prototyping and early manufacturing phases and still rely heavily on it for production and redesign.

Neurostimulation for prosthetic activation
— Dr Anita Quigley, UOW.

Last but not least was Anita Quigley, Senior Research Fellow from the Intelligent Polymer Research Institute who wowed the audience with her work on patient-derived stem cells for 3D printing. Like many other researchers in this field she has had to transition from being a biologist to a materials scientist, highlighting the interdisciplinary nature of this work.

3D Bioprinting with Dr Anita Quigley, UOW.

It was great to catch up with so many like-minded researchers and enthusiasts, as well as tour the Additive Manufacturing Precinct at RMIT. Thankyou everyone who came and we hope to see in in October at 3dMed Australia 2018! Remember — get those abstracts in ASAP!

Touring the facilities at RMIT’s AMP.

So much room… so jealous… and even the
fanciest facilities still use the old Makerbots.

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Ultimaker S5 Arrives

At long last our brand new Ultimaker S5 printer has arrived — we’ve been having lots of fun testing it out. Thanks to Australian suppliers Imaginables for getting it to us so soon after release, though we had to reach deep into our research grant savings jar to pay for it.

Gordon had the pleasure of unboxing and he could not resist making a big deal of it — check out our Instagram Story!

Somehow it has been christened with a name — Ultron 2018. Not sure about that one…

The good news is that the build volume is HUGE and we look forward to giving it a whirl. The dual extruder mechanism has been rock solid for the first few prints and having soluble PVA supports is just heavenly.

One tip — do a firmware update out of the box. We had problems syncing and connecting to Cura Connect until that was done.

Out of the box and ready to roll.

AV Fistula model
Printing one of A/Prof Tracie Barber’s AVF models.

The Ultimaker S5 arrives in its box!
Soluble PVA supports — Yay!

Ossicles
3D Printed Ossicles — Enough to make @DrEricLevi salivate.

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ARC Training Centre Application Successful!

We are excited to announce that our joint submission to the Australian Research Council Industrial Transformation Training Centre Grant to build Australia’s Medical Implant and MedTech capacity using 3D Printing has been successful! This will allow us, together with The University of Melbourne, Flinders University, Griffith University and multiple other project partners to fund post-graduate students who will spend time engaging in university-based training as well as workplace-based training in clinical and industry settings.

Continue reading “ARC Training Centre Application Successful!”