Ricoh USA, Inc. is partnering with Materialise to provide patient-specific software solutions for 3D printed medical models used in the healthcare industry.
The company announced this partnership to bolster RICOH 3D for Healthcare at the RSNA Assembly and Annual Meeting
The Ricoh 3D for Healthcare is a HIPAA-compliant, ISO 13485 certified 3D medical manufacturing center for the development, design and production of 3D-printed anatomic models. This partnership will support software solutions in their centralized medical device manufacturing facility and Point of Care facilities.
The partnership aims to create more personalized healthcare solutions so that the Point of Care centers can be expanded to help more people. In 2021, Ricoh partnered with IBM Watson Health to integrate its workflow with IBM iConnect® Access for better medical imaging data sharing.
Partnership to democratize Point of Care 3D printing
Hospitals around the world are witnessing a surge in 3D printed models usage to expand on-site Point of Care facilities and Ricoh and Materialise 3D printing technologies will cater to that. However, 3D printed models can be subjected to FDA regulation and Ricoh 3D for Healthcare ensures that the hospitals can scale up the manufacturing without FDA registration and go through a costly quality management system.
Ricoh’s multidisciplinary team navigates through the regulatory requirements and tackles all administrative aspects of it to offer end-to-end solutions for the hospitals. Through this partnership with Materialise, the company is democratizing Point of Care 3D printing for more patient-specific solutions.
Hospitals now have Materialise software integrated within Ricoh’s workflows to enhance the toolset to serve patients better.
Ricoh announced partnerships with Merge by Merative and Stratasys to enhance patient-specific 3D printing solutions. The Merative collaboration led to better access to the RICOH 3D for Healthcare Platform via the new PACS Print Gateway which streamlined workflow and democratized access for clinicians and patients. The Stratasys partnership is aimed to expand access to 3D printed medical models.
Speaking about this, Ricoh USA, Managing Director Gary Turner said: “The ecosystem of Ricoh partners, inclusive of Materialise, Merative and Stratasys, has enabled Ricoh to bring software in a end-to-end solution to different healthcare institutions around country to drive more Point of Care locations and capabilities nationally.”
The Vice President of Materialise, Bryan Crutchfield underlined why this is crucial as “Outside of large academic medical centers, physician and patient access to 3D printing applications has been limited due to a lack of resources and technical knowledge to implement and operationalize the technology in the hospital environment”.
“This partnership will enable hospital systems to more quickly and affordably implement and scale 3D technology for their physicians and patients. We are excited to partner with Ricoh to bring our end-to-end software platforms to support 3D planning and 3D printing applications at the Point of Care“, Crutchfield added.
Ricoh’s Managed Services platform will provide the medical manufacturing services on-site at the Point of Care. RICOH 3D for Healthcare has 510(k) clearances from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for patient-specific anatomic modeling for diagnostic use such as breast, cardiac and gastrointestinal applications along with cranial and orthopedic 3D printed medical models. This helps the company to support surgeries and to print diagnostic quality 3D anatomic models of bony and soft tissue using Stratasys 3D printing technology and materials.
The process of integrating Point of Care manufacturing into healthcare systems is being done in a phase wise manner in the US with multiple collaborations with hospitals. The company at present supports 9 out of 11 big chain of hospitals in the US and 22 out of 32 non-profit hospitals along with 3200 healthcare facilities.
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