3D Printing for Healthcare is the topic of our next event, AMA: Healthcare on June 4th.
For decades, orthotics and prosthetics relied on the same fundamental craft: plaster molds, thermoformed plastic, and hands-on adjustments at every fitting. The results were functional, but stagnant. Jan Rosicky, Co-Founder and Chief of Business Development at Invent Medical, watched this plateau firsthand.
His father founded Invent Medical in 1991. After moving through CAD-CAM, milling, and 3D scanning, the workflows improved but the end product didn’t. “The end product was still pretty much the same,” Rosicky said, which led them to start experimenting with 3D printing in 2010.
After testing more than 25 technologies, they settled on HP’s Multi Jet Fusion in 2017, which Rosicky says accelerated their development cycle. The company has since moved entirely to a digital scan-to-print workflow, producing tens of thousands of custom devices a year across 40+ countries from more than ten fabrication centers.
“The field is shifting, from fabrication toward patient care. Orthotists and prosthetists were originally very technical people; the work was defined by what you built. But more and more, we are recognizing that if O&P is going to hold its ground in the modern era, we need to be clear about our value. The device is not the point. The patient is,” said Rosicky.
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Devices Reimagined From the Inside Out
The Talee cranial remolding orthosis, used to correct positional head deformities in infants, shows what the shift made possible. Traditional helmets were bulky, heavy, and poorly ventilated, largely unchanged for two decades. Drilling holes into thermoformed shells to add breathability didn’t work, it was slow and structurally damaging. With 3D printing, lattice perforations are built into the design from the start, producing a device 50% thinner and twice as breathable. A replaceable inner liner, not achievable through thermoforming, is now standard.
Invent Medical also built companion software that compares 3D scans in one click, producing color-mapped progress charts for clinical tracking. Scanning an infant takes 30 to 40 seconds; post-processing another 30 to 40. The Talee has gone through more than 500 design iterations since its patent in 2013 and has been used on over 30,000 patients across 700+ locations.
For lower-limb patients, the Piro AFO offers consistent control over material thickness and flexibility across every zone, something thermoformed plastic can’t guarantee. Clinicians configure it through a software interface, entering clinical and anatomical data and selecting stiffness, colors, straps, and padding. One version is printed in flexible TPU with integrated padding and a wraparound closure.
The Piro Spring adds a fully 3D printed interchangeable strut in multiple stiffness levels. It took over a year to get the design right, Rosicky says three years ago he wouldn’t have thought a printed strut could hold up clinically. Clinicians can now swap stiffness in real time rather than grinding or heating plastic at the fitting table.
One patient, previously dependent on handrails while walking in thermoformed braces, was walking unassisted six days after switching to the Piro Spring. The only adjustments made: a strut swap and one shim change, taking under a minute.
“You can produce great or terrible devices with it,” Rosicky said of 3D printing. “It all comes down to design, process, and using the right material and post-processing combination.”
Each device goes through 500 to 1,000 design iterations over five to ten years before launch. An R&D team of 30+ specialists, covering product design, mechanical and materials engineering, software, testing, and clinical input, runs structured evaluations before anything reaches a patient.
Protective orthoses go through two-meter drop tests with embedded sensors and high-speed cameras. Structural components are tested under a modified ISO 10328 protocol, with static and cyclic loads up to 1,100 pounds. Once safety is confirmed, early-adopter patients are brought in for kinematic and dynamic gait analysis.
A Shifting Business Model
Rosicky sees a structural change in how O&P clinics operate. The field historically centered on fabrication, orthotists and prosthetists as skilled craftspeople. That is giving way to smaller, digital-first clinics that outsource fabrication and focus on clinical outcomes, patient relationships, and specialist referrals.
These clinics, he says, are outcompeting much larger operations, lower overhead, stronger physician relationships, and a patient base that arrives having already researched their options online. Invent Medical sees this directly: tens of thousands of patients reach out asking where to access specific devices, pushing clinics to adopt or lose the referral.
Reimbursement remains a constraint. Rosicky’s view is pragmatic, it will change, but slowly, and building a business around waiting for it isn’t viable. In the meantime, the broader debate has settled.
“When Invent Medical introduced its 3D printed products at a German trade show in 2018, they were among two or three companies doing so, and the question was whether the technology belonged in O&P at all. That question no longer gets asked,” said Rosicky.
3D Printing in Orthotics and Prosthetics
For most of its history, the orthotics and prosthetics field treated fabrication as its core competency, custom devices built by hand, adjusted in-person, and largely unchanged in process for decades. The gap 3D printing in O&P addresses isn’t just manufacturing efficiency; it’s the disconnect between what personalized care should look like and what traditional fabrication could actually deliver.
The regulatory environment is catching up. In 2025, 3D printing was officially recognized as a reimbursable fabrication method for prosthetic devices under Medicare, extending a 2024 ruling that had already covered orthotic devices, making digital fabrication financially viable within existing billing frameworks.
Other companies are tackling adoption from different angles. Protosthetics launched Galileo, a plug-and-play in-house 3D printing program built specifically for O&P practices. Qwadra and Create it REAL partnered to integrate Programmable Foam technology into dedicated O&P printers, allowing clinicians to control zones of rigidity and flexibility within a single device. On the clinical side, the Atlanta VA Healthcare System became the first Veterans Affairs facility to produce custom-fitted 3D printed casts and splints on-site using smartphone-based scanning.
The regulatory, clinical, and manufacturing pieces are aligning. The question for most O&P practices is no longer whether to adopt 3D printing, but how fast.
3D Printing Industry is inviting speakers for its 2026 Additive Manufacturing Applications (AMA) series, covering Energy, Healthcare, Automotive and Mobility, Aerospace, Space and Defense, and Software. Each online event focuses on real production deployments, qualification, and supply chain integration. Practitioners interested in contributing can complete the call for speakers form here.
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Featured image shows AMA Healthcare. Image via 3D Printing Industry.
