Ricoh USA has announced at the RSNA Assembly and Annual Meeting, a partnership with Materialise that will provide software solutions to support RICOH 3D for Healthcare – a HIPAA-compliant, ISO 13485 certified 3D medical manufacturing centre for the development, design and production of 3D-printed anatomic models – in both their centralised medical device manufacturing facility, as well as in Ricoh’s Point of Care facilities.
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3D printed anatomical part
Through the partnership, Ricoh will be able to drive more personalised healthcare solutions and make it simple to create or expand on-site point-of-care centres.
With an uptick in 3D printing, hospitals are either now seeking to enter the market by establishing point-of-care centres onsite or scaling existing offerings. A main driver of either option is co-located management of facilities and production through partners such as Ricoh with technologies like those from Materialise. However, it is important for care providers to recognise that when these 3D-printed models and other instruments are used for patient care, they may be considered medical devices, subject to FDA regulation. With RICOH 3D for Healthcare, hospitals can adopt or advance point-of-care manufacturing without the need to become an FDA registered medical device manufacturer, implement a quality management system, navigate regulatory requirements, or tackle the administrative aspects to support it all with a multidisciplinary team.
Ricoh is partnering with Materialise to leverage its software solutions to bring affordable point-of-care 3D printing services to hospitals across the country. The partnership will allow both parties to expand the use of Materialise software within Ricoh’s workflows and continually improve the available toolset to better serve patient care.
Gary Turner, managing director, Additive Manufacturing, North America, Ricoh USA, said: “Materialise’s software tools will not only help Ricoh provide a better experience for its customers, but also support Ricoh in its goal democratising equitable access to impactful tools such as patient-specific anatomic models. The ecosystem of Ricoh partners, inclusive of Materialise, Merative and Stratasys, has enabled Ricoh to bring world-class software in a first-of-its-kind, end-to-end solution to different healthcare institutions around country to drive more Point of Care locations and capabilities nationally.”
Bryan Crutchfield, vice president and general manager of Materialise North America, added: “Outside of large academic medical centres, physician and patient access to 3D printing applications has been limited. This is often due to a lack of resources and technical knowledge to implement and operationalise the technology in the hospital environment. This partnership with Ricoh brings a large managed services infrastructure, which 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.”
Materialise is the latest strategic partnership helping Ricoh offer democratised access to patient-specific 3D-printed models in healthcare.
- Merge by Merative: Through an expanded partnership with Merge by Merative, hospitals and clinicians can access the RICOH 3D for Healthcare Platform via the new PACS Print Gateway. The workflow will be initiated via a “Send to RICOH 3D” button that can be added to a variety of DICOM viewers. This will initiate the transfer of the appropriate DICOM study to a cloud-based vendor neutral archive. It will also activate the RICOH 3D for Healthcare Case Management Portal to manage the case in conjunction with the clinical team.
- Stratasys: RICOH 3D for Healthcare engages in a strategic collaboration with Stratasys to leverage their 3D printing technology to expand access to 3D-printed medical models.
RICOH 3D for Healthcare has received 510(k) clearances from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for patient-specific anatomic modelling for diagnostic use, including cardiovascular, neurological, gastrointestinal, genitourinary, and breast applications, as well as craniomaxillofacial (CMF) and orthopaedic patient-specific anatomic modelling.
