Medicine

The terminator may not come at any time soon but medicines should be coming soon at a printer near you … Mid last year, Gartner mentioned " medical applications [of 3D printing] will have the biggest impact in the next two to five years". With 3D printing you can already create a lot of physical artifacts and medical applications go from building medical equipments to prosthetic parts, but also blood vessels, bone, heart valve, cartilage, etc. Complete organs are not too far, with companies like Organovo already printing functional liver assays, prospects to restore a body by replacing or consolidating personalized parts seem interesting. ...

The US FDA recently approved Proteus Digital Health Ingestion Event Marker ( IEM). Basically, it’s a pill with some electronics attached (very tiny electronics: around 0.5mm in diameter for a total weigth of 5mg, see picture below). Once activated the pill transmit a signal and, coupled with a detector, you know when the pill got into your body. Edible sensor for electronically confirming adherence to oral medications. ...