Ricoh USA, Inc has officially announced the launch of its flagship Point of Care 3D medical device manufacturing facility named RICOH 3D for Healthcare Innovation Studio. Located in Innovation Quarter, in downtown Winston-Salem, N.C., the new facility comes bearing an aim to provide clinicians with easy and immediate access to development, design, and manufacturing services for patient-specific, 3D-printed anatomic models. These models, once developed, can be used for surgical planning and patient education. Anyway, to understand the significance of such a development, we must acknowledge how patient care teams suffering from limited access to 3D-printed anatomic models often see challenges related to workflow disruptions, lead time issues, resources, and regulatory compliance when attempting to acquire patient-specific anatomic models. This, like you can guess, does a lot to impact the very standard of patient care. Fortunately enough, the all-new RICOH 3D for Healthcare Innovation Studio aims to resolve these challenges by leveraging Ricoh’s HIPAA-compliant, ISO 13485-certified 3D medical device manufacturing center and Managed Services technology for seamless development, design, and production of 3D-printed anatomic models. This involves bringing patient-specific anatomic modeling directly into the hospital using Ricoh’s innovative quality management system, which is already known for providing clinicians with the confidence of FDA-cleared devices.
More on the same would reveal how the on-site center allows for faster production times, in-person access to clinical resources and 3D-printing expertise, as well as multidisciplinary team collaboration across national networks, thus providing clinicians and patients with a wider team of experts and support for enhanced care. Furthermore, it makes a point to increase communication and feedback between the care team and Ricoh staff, drive innovation for personalized patient care, and focus on collecting data attached to the benefits of using 3D-printed anatomic models.
“The RICOH 3D for Healthcare Innovation Studio is a foundational step in Ricoh’s long-term vision to lead the way in democratizing access to patient-specific, precision medical solutions in healthcare,” said Gary Turner, Managing Director OF Additive Manufacturing, North America, Ricoh USA, Inc. “As we look to integrate and scale Point of Care facilities within health systems nationally, we’re extremely grateful that Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist has partnered with us to make the first facility a reality, and we look forward to growing 3D production within their network and in other hospital systems across the country.”
We referred to the new facility’s knowhow when it comes to producing patient-specific, 3D-printed anatomic models for surgical planning and patient education, but what we haven’t mentioned is that they can also be used for diagnostic purposes in various medical fields. The stated fields cover disciplines like craniomaxillofacial, orthopedic, cardiovascular, neurological, gastrointestinal, genitourinary, and breast applications etc.
Talk about some specific benefits that the new RICOH 3D for Healthcare Innovation Studio can be expected to deliver moving, it begins from the promise of reduced operating times. You see, surgeons who got to be a part of facility’s pilot run saw an average operation time savings worth 62 minutes, along with a 7.8% reduction in operative time. Next up, we must acknowledge those 50% of surgeons who were able to refine their surgical approach by using a 3D mode during the planning stage. Markedly, upon using the given model for diagnostic purposes, surgeons observed an average cost savings of $3,720 per case. Another benefit we had coming into play talked to decreased compliance concerns. Here, the idea is to leverage Ricoh’s award-winning Managed Services platform, 3D-printing expertise, and FDA 510(k)-cleared anatomic models to make sure that the facility meets all regulatory and legal compliance requirements
