New 3D Printing Group Established

UEAHSCP have launched a new group, Point-Of-Care 3D printing, led by Dr Sheng Qi, a Reader in Pharmaceutics at UEA’ s School of Pharmacy.

3D printing has revolutionised many sectors, improving productivity and creating products that were not possible using traditional manufacturing methods.

The influence of 3D printing is rapidly increasing in the health and social care sectors, particularly within acute hospital environments, and is emerging as a key enabler of personalised and cheaper treatment.

Learning from the lessons from the COVID-19 crisis, the group has formed in response to the growing need to build flexibility and resilience into the manufacturing and supply capabilities of the NHS and to contribute to the Greener NHS agenda. The group aims to accurately identify highpriority clinical applications of 3D printing and build our regional research and manufacturing capability in medical and pharmaceutical 3D printing at the point-of-care.

The UEA-led research in pharmaceutical 3D printing and the clinical partners ’ expertise in medical 3D printing for surgical, radiotherapy and education form the foundation of this group.

In the press release of their recently published work in May in the International Journal of Pharmaceutics, Dr Qi said: “Currently our medicines are manufactured in ' one-size-fitsall' fashion.

“Personalised medicine uses new manufacturing technology to produce pills that have the accurate dose and drug combinations tailored to individual patients. This would allow the patients to get maximal drug benefits with minimal side effects.

“Such treatment approaches can particularly benefit elderly patients who often have to take many different types of medicines per day and patients with complicated conditions. ” The newly formed group ’ s work, Dr Qi said, will build upon the foundation of this research to design the technology needed in future to produce personalised medicine at the point-of-care.

“For health and social care, particularly acute hospital environments, 3D printing is emerging as integral to designing personalized and effective treatment with rapid service delivery and at a lower cost for certain patient populations. ” - Dr Sheng Qi

The group is composed of leading academics and clinicians from UEA, East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust, Loughborough University, The Queen Elizabeth Hospital King ' s Lynn NHS Foundation Trust, and West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust, and has the vision and ambition to make our region the leader of transforming 3D printing technologies into cost-effective tools to serve the NHS and service users.

UEAHSCP Managing Director Mark Hitchcock is delighted to welcome the new group into the partnership and anticipates their work will make a real difference to service user experience: “I’ m excited by the opportunities that 3D printing offers in providing highly personalised care, particularly the group ’ s innovative research into printing medicines to an individual’ s prescription ” .

" O u r g r o u p h a s t h e v i s i o n a n d a m b i t i o n t o b e a r e g i o n a l l e a d e r i n t r a n s f o r m i n g 3 D p r i n t i n g t e c h n o l o g i e s i n t o c o s t - e f f e c t i v e t o o l s t o s e r v e o u r N H S a n d o u r p a t i e n t s .

- D r S h e n g Q i , R e a d e r i n P h a r m a c e u t i c s , U E A , a n d P o i n t - O f - C a r e 3 D p r i n t i n g l e a d .