Point-of-Care Design and Production of Cranial Implants
2021 Campaign: Personalized HealthTech & 3D Printing
Recent breakthroughs in Additive Manufacturing (AM) have enabled the point-of-care production (POC) of individualized implants. Healthcare institutions such as the University Hospital Basel have built up their own medically approved production facilities for the POC production of implants such as cranial implants.
The basic production-related challenges have been solved, now the design becomes a major bottleneck. The design of impants requires a high degree of medical know-how, expertise in the production technology and computer-aided design (CAD) skills.
Within this project, the University Hospital Basel and ETH Zurich & Inspire AG will establish a web platform for the automated design of cranial implants. The web based design tool will enable healthcare professionals without specific engineering and design skills to design production ready cranial implants. The application in the area of cranial implants is intended as pilot application, since the solution can be transferred to other applications and it is well scalable.
