The era of medical beauty customization is coming! 3D printing reshapes 140 billion market?

  Driven by "beauty economy", personalized customized plastic surgery and perfect plastic surgery become the pursuit of beauty lovers. On April 15, guangyunda announced that its subsidiary 3D printing medical beauty project will cooperate with some large plastic surgery hospitals in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, promoting the development of 3D printing technology in the medical beauty industry. Driven by the national policy and the market demand of medical beauty, the dream of personalized plastic surgery in the future will come true.

  Medical 3D printing technology matures

  3D printing technology is a kind of technology based on digital model file, through software layered discrete and numerical control forming system, using laser, hot melting and other ways to stack metal, ceramics, plastics, cells and other materials layer by layer to construct objects.

  Medical 3D printing is a unique branch of 3D printing technology, and it is the most advanced field of 3D printing technology research. Its characteristics of rapidity, accuracy and personalized customization make it have a wide range of application prospects in the medical field.

  With the passage of time, medical 3D printing technology has gradually matured and industrialized. At present, 3D printing has been commercialized in the fields of medical models, surgical guides and dentistry, and the development of orthopedic implants is gradually mature.

Medical 3D printing market scale increases

  According to statistics, the global medical 3D printing market will reach 6.6 billion yuan in 2019, and it is estimated that the global medical 3D printing market will reach 8.9 billion yuan by 2022.

  Driven by the personalized demand and high added value of medical services, the scale of China's medical 3D printing market is increasing year by year, from 330 million yuan in 2014 to 1.54 billion yuan in 2019, with a compound growth rate of 29.27%. The scale of China's medical 3D printing market is expected to exceed 2 billion yuan in 2020.

Medical plastic field becomes a new market competition point of 3D printing

Compared with the traditional plastic filling products, medical 3D printing products have more advantages. In the future, medical plastic field will become a new market growth point of 3D printing.

  The traditional shaping filling is to select the mold from the model which is roughly consistent with the consumer's shaping part, and then carve. For example, chin filling, Traditional Chin filling requires doctors to carve prosthesis materials, such as silica gel and bulky body, according to the shape of the chin bone, so that they can be implanted into the chin to form a perfect shape.

  Using 3D customized artificial bone, it can achieve seamless fit with the bone, without the need for doctors to carve in the operation, directly implanted into the chin, not only can achieve a perfect shape, the most important thing is that it fits with the bone very well, and the cohesion is also very good. Therefore, 3D custom chin artificial bone in plastic surgery began to attract the attention of consumers.

  From the overall scale of surgical plastic surgery, people's pursuit of beauty promotes the growth of surgical plastic surgery market. The market scale of medical cosmetic surgery in China has increased from 38.8 billion yuan in 2015 to 115 billion yuan in 2019, with a compound annual growth rate of 24.27%, and is expected to exceed 140 billion yuan in 2020.

  The huge market demand and the unique advantages of 3D printing promote the development of medical 3D printing in the field of medical plastic surgery, which means that there is a huge space for the development of 3D printing in the plastic surgery industry in the future.

From the perspective of segmentation, eyelid surgery, nose augmentation surgery and breast augmentation surgery accounted for 54.5% of the total in the scope of surgery projects, among which consumers' demand for facial plastic surgery was relatively strong, accounting for 34.1%.

  In the past, in augmentation rhinoplasty and breast augmentation surgery, we choose the model that is consistent with the consumer from the existing prosthetic models, and then carve it to make it conform to the requirements. The 3D customized artificial bone does not need carving, and the 3D printing technology can simulate the postoperative effect, which is convenient for doctors to explain the operation plan to patients, and can communicate with patients more effectively. At the same time, it is convenient for members of the medical group to communicate with each other, improve the tacit understanding of operation cooperation, and improve the success rate and safety of operation.

  Compared with traditional filling, 3D custom artificial bone has the advantages of strong support, touch like real bone and seamless connection with facial bone, which is welcomed by beauty lovers. With the prominent advantages of 3D printing technology in medical plastic surgery, it promotes the development of 3D printing in medical plastic surgery.

  Future challenges of 3D printing in domestic medical industry

  01 lack of medical 3D printing materials

  Medical 3D printing materials need to be biocompatible, but there are not many materials that can be implanted into human body and used for 3D printing. At present, medical 3D printing materials mainly include medical inorganic non-metallic materials, medical polymer materials, metal materials, composite materials, cell materials, etc. At present, there are only 70 or 80 kinds of common 3D printing materials in the world, and there are very few medical grade 3D printing materials. Most medical 3D materials in China still rely on imports.

  02 high import cost and cumbersome examination and approval

  At present, the 3D printing equipment used in the medical field in China is mainly imported, especially the high-quality printing materials still need to be directly supplied by overseas equipment suppliers, and the mature commercial mode has not yet formed in China, resulting in the high cost of 3D printing equipment.

  At the same time, 3D printing equipment to be introduced into the medical field needs to go through cumbersome approval procedures. The process of applying through ISO can be as little as one year and as many as several years, which increases the time cost of 3D printing equipment and increases the cost of equipment. 3D printing equipment is a high-precision instrument and equipment, the maintenance cost is relatively high, especially related to the maintenance of the core components of the equipment.

  03 lack of medical 3D technical talents

  Medical 3D printing products are the result of the interaction of medical knowledge, 3D modeling technology and 3D printing technology, which requires designers to have interdisciplinary knowledge. However, because doctors do not have 3D modeling skills, and modeling engineers are unable to screen first-hand data due to lack of medical knowledge, there is a deviation between 3D modeling and medical knowledge.

  At the same time, the training of 3D printing surgery for doctors is still relatively small. In order to get large-scale dissemination and application, professional teaching of doctors is needed. At present, there is still a lack of 3D printing talents in hospitals, and the development of medical 3D printing technology is not mature enough and needs to be improved.

Summary

  Medical 3D printing technology has made some progress and has been widely used in many fields. Because it can be designed for specific patient needs, on-demand production and high production efficiency, its application effect in medicine is increasingly obvious. The first is to use the medical 3D printing technology to print out the damaged tissue of human body and help patients get new life. Secondly, the application level of skin repair and beauty will be further improved. Finally, under special circumstances, 3D printers can be used to make medical supplies to temporarily solve the problem of insufficient medical supplies.

  With the increasingly prominent advantages of 3D printing technology in the medical field, the state has also issued a series of policies to support the development of medical 3D printing. For example, 3D printing is listed in the national key R & D plan in the "14th five year plan". In April this year, the food and Drug Administration issued the guidelines for the registration of PEEK implants in additive manufacturing (Exposure Draft), which standardized the application scope and product performance evaluation indicators of implants related to 3D printing (additive manufacturing), thus promoting the development of medical 3D printing industry.

  Although 3D printing technology has been successfully used in the medical field, there are still some problems, such as the biocompatibility of implanted materials, how to solve the tissue heterogeneity and organ rejection in the process of using 3D printing organs, and so on.