Operating in the 'medtech centre for cardiology'

Ian Bolland spoke to MedScan3D’s technical director Jacqui O’Connor, about its offering, the advantage of its Galway base and the part it played in helping frontline health workers in Ireland during the COVID-19 pandemic.

At the start of lockdown many companies from several different sectors were switching their production lines to cater for the urgent need of medical equipment for front line medical staff and key workers.

It was the same for MedScan3D in Galway. At a time when business slowed in terms of demand for its anatomic models, the company switched its focus to developing protective face shields for Irish care homes.

The company set up a GoFundMe page to allow donations to cover the cost of developing and delivering the equipment to the frontline.

Jacqui O’Connor, technical director at MedScan3D explained: “At the end of the day we have the capability to print these face masks, and I couldn’t ethically sit back and ignore it.”

The company has since launched products to try and keep people in the workplace safe as life begins to return to some sort of normality, launched under the brand name AMBI Safe. Products are manufactured by 3D printing technologies in an antimicrobial material containing nano-copper ions, which self-sterilises the material from microbes on an expedited time span. It’s hoped that in addition to other guidelines in place, such as using PPE and social distancing measures, workplace absenteeism can be low.

Anatomic models for surgery remain the focus at MedScan. O’Connor explains the company came about when she was on maternity leave. Her husband, James, runs 3D printing supplier 3D Technology, and when he received interest in anatomic models, O’Connor thought it was something she could do – with demand leading them to set up a different sector known today as MedScan3D.

Explaining the company’s offering, O’Connor elaborates: “We sell ourselves as a consultancy firm, an extension to an R&D team. We work with different R&D teams and bring our expertise in on biomedical engineering.

“We come to the table with more than just file to print kind of service. It’s more of a project we take on with the companies to develop anatomical testing models they can use for their medical devices.

“A lot of the time it would possibly be something to do with the heart, possibly a stent, or a catheter put in. They might want to have a specific part of the heart they’re testing on. They might want it to be patient specific or they just want a clinically relevant model that they can test on.”

MedScan3D then takes files that are supplied to them, a lot of the time patient specific from surgeons and doctors, so they can be converted or segmented into a 3D printable.

“Once we have that then we do a prototype using 3D printing, they can do preliminary tests on that and then if they’re happy with the design we can go to silicone casting, so they can do ongoing tests with that model. Within that model before we go and print it our CAD designer can then add different ports, can edit it to suit their demand, basically, if it means they want to slot it into a simulation model they already have.”

The Galway base has its advantages for the company as a lot of its business tends to be focussed around its cardiology offering, which O’Connor acknowledges as companies such as Medtronic and Boston Scientific are close by along with many more. Though O’Connor describes Galway as the “medtech centre for cardiology devices,” she’s keen to stress the company can focus on other areas, though the vascular space is where most of MedScan3D’s business is done.

“There’s probably a couple of hundred companies on our doorstep and the bulk of our business comes from that. But we can do orthopaedics, ortho dentistry.

“Bones are also quite easy compared to vascular. Vascular is quite complicated to convert into 3D image because you have to separate all the different blood volumes and vessels and things like that. That’s where our expertise comes into play because we can convert and segment something that we see a lot of, it’s what we look at all day.”