Luka Visiting 3D Bioprinting Conference in Maastricht
Once a year, this year for the fourth time, people from the fields related to medical 3D printing gather in Maastricht (NED) and share knowledge and experience. The 3D bioprinting conference in Maastricht is one of the biggest events in this part of the world. Luckily, this year IRNAS also had a chance to participate.
After a long and eventful trip to the north Luka had arrived to a hostel in Aachen at 0.45am on the day of the event. After only 4 hours of sleep, his journey had continued towards Maastricht where the conference took place.
Tuesday 31st Jan 2017 two conferences were on the schedule – one dedicated to 3D bioprinting and the other to dental 3D printing.
In the lobby of the conference hall different companies were presenting their machines or show what could be done using the machines they bought and the application of the print-outs. One had a chance to see everything from 3D bioprinters to material testing machines, dental print-outs, bone replacement parts and various bioprinting technology related products for material testing or quality analysis. The interesting part of the exhibition was to see bioprinters during the working process live and assess their performance on the go.
In the lecture room the visitors could participate at seven lectures during the day, coming mainly from different European research institutions, covering high-end biomaterial deposition techniques, complementary technologies, cases of (un)successful application and more.
After lots of notes and pictures taken during the lectures, the most informative part came with the debate at the end of each lecture. It was extremely interesting to hear so many different perspectives on this technology by the visitors of the conference, coming from various areas of expertise, from bio-engineers and researchers to doctors, surgeons, dentists, dental surgeons, pharmacologists, plastic surgeons, people from private insurance companies, industrial developers etc. There was a lot of agreement and also disagreement about its’ use and what would be the direction of development in the future. Most thoughts were legitimate and well fact-supported. Depending on the person’s background, some see bioprinting merely as a tool like any other which helps solve a particular micro-problem on the way to solving the big one. Some see it as way more than this. There was a lot of talking about the affordability and reasons why this technology isn’t being used yet (at least not to the proportion of the possibilities it offers).
After all lectures, many exchanged ideas and business cards Luka went back home with high level of self-confidence to proceed with what we began with Vitaprint project at IRNAS and some new ideas on how to take this project onwards, keeping it on the right track.
All in all, it was an informative journey and hopefully in the near future we can raise our level and become a part of this conference as presenters in a booth or lecturers in front of the audience. For now, we invite you to follow the progress of Vitaprint on this blog or get in contact with Luka for more information about this project.
Source: 3D Bioprinting Conference
