The Institute of Biomechanics of Valencia, together with AIDIMME and AIJU, announce a project to manufacture custom prostheses and splints with 3D printing. The news sounds like a promise of future healthcare, but the citizen pays taxes so that these technology centers can publish studies while the real products never land in public healthcare. Spanish bureaucracy and the lack of homologation turn the advancement into a mirage.
Laboratory prototypes that never leave the paper 🧪
The technology exists: 3D scanning of the patient, parametric design, and additive manufacturing with biocompatible filaments. However, the process stops at the proof-of-concept phase. While in hospitals in Germany and the USA, splints are printed in the same operating room, here the technology centers live off European subsidies to generate papers. Health homologation, with its endless deadlines, turns each project into a funding loop with no clinical destination.
Meanwhile, the patient waits sitting (with their plaster splint) 🪑
The curious thing is that, while researchers publish in scientific journals, private companies take the credit and sell the few splints that reach the market at a premium price. The system works like this: we pay for R&D with taxes, and then we buy the final product at the price of a work of art. Meanwhile, the patient continues with their 19th-century plaster splint. Technological advancement, yes, but for the pockets of a few.