Leveraging 3D Printing Capacity in Times of Crisis: Recommendations for COVID-19 Distributed Manufacturing for Medical Equipment Rapid Response

Abstract

<jats:p>The SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic has provided a unique set of global supply chain limitations with an exponentially growing surge of patients requiring care. The needs for Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for hospital staff and doctors have been overwhelming, even just to rule out patients not infected. High demand for traditionally manufactured devices, challenged by global demand and limited production, has resulted in a call for additive manufactured (3D printed) equipment to fill the gap between traditional manufacturing cycles. This method has the unique ability to pivot in real time, while traditional manufacturing may take months to change production runs. 3D printing has been used to produce a variety of equipment for hospitals including face shields, masks, and even ventilator components to handle the surge. This type of rapid, crowd sourced, design and production resulted in new challenges for regulation, liability, and distribution. This manuscript reviews these challenges and successes of additive manufacturing and provides a forward plan for hospitals to consider for future surge events. Recommendations: To accommodate future surges, hospitals and municipalities should develop capacity for short-run custom production, enabling them to validate new designs. This will rapidly increase access to vetted equipment and critical network sharing with community distributed manufacturers and partners. Clear guidance and reviewed design repositories by regulatory authorities will streamline efforts to combat future pandemic waives or other surge events.</jats:p>

Economic savings for scientific free and open source technology: A review

“…having been downloaded thousands of times and presumably used) not all scientists are aware of them and one of the primary disadvantages is concerns over quality and validation. Such a database would provide this service as was seen with the NIH 3-D Print Exchange providing validated designs for both clinical and community use during the COVID-19 pandemic [92] , [93] , [94] . Institute, preferential purchasing guidelines for open source technologies particularly for validated tool sets from 3) for all government labs and all government funded projects similar to other federal programs meant to boost a specific technology (e.g.…”

“…having been downloaded thousands of times and presumably used) not all scientists are aware of them and one of the primary disadvantages is concerns over quality and validation. Such a database would provide this service as was seen with the NIH 3-D Print Exchange providing validated designs for both clinical and community use during the COVID-19 pandemic [92] , [93] , [94] .…”

Digital Technologies-Enabled Smart Manufacturing and Industry 4.0 in the Post-COVID-19 Era: Lessons Learnt from a Pandemic

“…While COVID-19 has unearthed the limitations that plague traditional manufacturing cycles and processes, including supply chains, Manero and collaborators [ 1 ] have explored the feasibility of exploiting additive manufacturing, like three-dimensional (3D) printing, to overcome such issues. Utilizing various real-world examples, the authors have illustrated the hypes and hopes of 3D printing and how it can be deployed for counteracting and mitigating the burden generated by COVID-19.…”

“…Further shortcomings are given by regulatory aspects, like product certifications, which are quite challenging in the absence of an effective standardization of procedures. Moreover, even though 3D printing is an incredibly democratic technology, allowing anybody having a 3D printer to be part of big societal participatory projects (the so-called “citizen supply chain” project) [ 10 ], “unified production coalitions” and “collaborative design networks” [ 1 ], high quality of the product should be ensured. As such, there is an urgent need to establish stringent clinical safety criteria and high quality standards and protocols.…”

Optimization of community-led 3D printing for the production of protective face shields

“…the frames were not thoroughly rinsed with water, the bleach solution is not diluted correctly, or the frames are submerged for an inappropriate amount of time) the solution can cause potential degradation of the material, effectively altering the integrity of the frames [ 32 , 33 ]. This is in part a consequence of using Fuse Deposition Modeling, which results in a porous structure of the printed material [ 34 , 35 ]. Bleach is an extremely corrosive agent that degrades even the most resistant materials (e.g.…”