Apr 20, 2016 | By Alec
If you happened to be watching the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament on TV last month, you might have seen some very unusual commercials during half time. For medical developers Northwell Health ran a total of 16 thirty-second ads during the tournament, asking viewers to choose which of three innovative healthcare projects would receive $100,000 in funding. Well the votes are in, and a custom 3D bioprinting solution developed by Northwell researchers has won by a landslide. What’s more, Northwell Health just announced that they are planning to spin off this successful 3D bioprinting venture into a separate company over the next eight months.
The Northwell Innovation Contest was spread out over a month and featured television commercials and online voting. Voters were asked to choose between three promising healthcare innovations that have all come out of Northwell’s labs, with the winner receiving a six-figure stipend for commercialization purposes. The contest was reportedly largely decided by the commercials that aired during the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament.
In total, 487,761 votes had been cast. The winning custom 3D bioprinter, developed by researchers Daniel Grande and Todd Goldstein of Northwell Health’s Feinstein Institute for Medical Research and pediatric otolaryngologist Lee Smith of the Cohen Children’s Medical Center, received 245,272 votes. The rest were spread out over two other innovations: the wearable Patient Identification Shield that serves as a modern alternative for a hospital wristband, and the Blood Loss Manager, a device that staunches blood loss during surgeries.
Northwell’s 3D bioprinting solution receives about half of all the votes. The custom 3D bioprinter in question is capable of producing a variety of living, functional tissue implants, and is the result of several years’ worth of research. “We’ve done full replacement of tracheas in rabbits,” Grande said about the state of their research, adding that it would take them five to ten years to develop such procedures for human patients, depending on approval from the FDA.
The $100,000 prize was awarded to the researchers earlier this week by the company’s president Michael J. Bowling. According to the researchers, the funds will be used to bolster commercialization efforts and set up end-to-end medical 3D printing solutions. But they will thus also set up an independent company, with the help of Northwell Health. As the researchers explain, the need for a separate institute became apparent throughout their work with 3D printed animal bones and organs. As their research progressed, they came into contact with a wide variety of clinicians who all wanted to work with 3D printing. This demand made the need for a centralized, independent 3D printing lab more and more apparent. This new company is expected to open its doors in early 2017. Northwell will also consolidate clinical 3D printing requirements throughout the medical system on the researchers’ behalf.
During the award ceremony, Northwell’s president Dowling emphasized the technology’s ability to change healthcare as we know it. “3D bioprinting’s potential is almost limitless and has the potential to replace many different parts of the human body,” he said when handing out the prize. “Researchers envision a future with 3D printers in every emergency room, where doctors are able to print emergency implants of organs and bones on demand and revolutionize the way medicine is practiced.”
Senior vice president Thomas Thornton, who is responsible for setting up and financing spin-off companies, further argued that 3D bioprinting solutions will soon become an indispensable part of the medical world. “As one of the nation’s most innovate health systems, we believe there’s strong clinical demand for 3D printing and we’re working with our clinical partners and researchers to use these technologies to enhance patient care,” he said. Thornton further said that they had not lost faith in the other two competitors, adding that they will be looking into future investment opportunities for those innovations as well. But 3D bioprinting is clearly what it’s all about right now.
Posted in 3D Printing Application
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