DIY maker-care players — at every level — are already producing “exo-solutions” (e.g., hyper-custom exoskeleton casts) with 3D printing (3DP) to meet human health needs for non-invasive, patient-specific prostheses, devices and systems. Now, some prescient healthcare academics and professionals are betting that the nurse — 3DP-enabled —will be the next front-line foot-soldier of DIY health practitioners…
These DIY maker care innovators are pushing on, devising entirely new healthcare solutions to meet a broad spectrum of human needs. And these creators span the gamut from the uncredentialed, non-commercial in home-based and informal “Maker Spaces” to highly sophisticated, “edu-biz” collaborators combining 3DP proceeds from cutting-edge academic labs and “mechatronic” industrial floors. The 3DP innovations produced along this broadly defined, Maker-Care spectrum might start at one edge with 3D printed, DIT (Do-It-Together), GET (Good-Enough Tech) and muscle-mech-powered prosthetic hands (“Robohand“). While at the other end of the 3D printed spectrum for this type of application is the highly sophisticated and engineered exoskeleton Wearable Robots that respond to thought-commands by the paraplegic walker (“Walk Again”).
Now, under the radar (isn’t this typically where the action is?), we find another locus where 3DP and Human Health are about to cross-pollinate. The ‘maker’ ethos is empowering DIY medi-mechatronic mash-ups to meet the missions of nurses and caregivers in healthcare institutions.
These stealth innovations began — as long ago as the 19th century — with nurses devising “medico kludges” by cobbling them up in the supply closets of nursing units on the hospital floor.
Jose Gomez-Marquez leads the Little Devices Lab at MIT and he spoke recently at the Bay Area Maker Faire on the topic of “Makers in the Nursing Unit: Lessons Learned from America’s Amazing MakerNurses.”
In my 3DP blogging, I’ve regularly spoken about the democratization of technology, innovation and product-making delivered by 3D printing. This democratization can empower people with visions of better ways to accomplish what needs to be done for the betterment of others. I am by no means alone in expounding this concept, indeed, it is central toJose Gomez-Marquez’s theme in his presentation of last month: “What we’re trying to do is to make affordable medical devices for everyone.”
Professor Gomez-Marquez position and work at MIT affords him a unique perspective on worldwide efforts to provide low-cost and accessible tools for health. Indeed, Gomez-Marquez is finding medi-hackers everywhere. And — in the Human Health exigencies of life and death — extreme ingenuity comes from extreme need. To illustrate what people in extremis can accomplish, the Professor has even discovered a healthcare DIYer who managed to tinker-up a working — and effective — dialysis machine.
Even in the most invasive of procedures — repairing a beating heart — Gomez-Marquez points to the success of DIY ingenuity. He states that balloon angioplasty was a kitchen-table hack by a doctor with no R&D budget kludging up solutions in his kitchen.
Now, a desktop 3D Printer can sit on that kitchen table. Or, in that nurses’ supply closet. What hacked healthcare innovations are likely to bubble up in the DIY/DIT (Do-It-Together) medico beakers? Especially when nurse practitioners can apply their (literally!) hands-on expertise — and caregiver ethos — in Maker-style creativity, 3DP-enabled?
Jose Gomez-Marquez is now “hacking” the nurse’s world — and their medical-hardware innovation sensibilities — to learn from the culture that is known for bedside ingenuity. In 2013, he and his team “launched MakerNurse[.org]…to find inventive nurses around the country who combine the Maker ethic with their own mission to heal patients.”
The Professor traces the natural evolution and asks: “What if nurses had access to 3D Printers?”
Gomez-Marquez has already learned that “healthcare has lots of blackbox designs: biomed design is blackbox mentality.” So — opening the “blackbox” — hacking and reverse-engineering and innovating takes a special chutzpa-mindset among Maker Nurses.
So, the Professor opines: “‘Making’ in healthcare is less about technology and more about social, hierarchical and class issues.” He further states that “Nurse Makers are not prevalent in academic [based healthcare] centers: [Maker Nurses there] see the track of innovation as very advanced” and thus less susceptible to their DIY hacking. Not surprisingly, the Nurse Maker action is more readily found “mostly in small to medium-sized healthcare institutions.”
Or — framing these key issues another way — does authority, gate-keeping and credentialism stifle innovation? Hmm. Nurses: perhaps your traditional “stealth mode” of making (better) things happen for your patients — and hiding that new, boot-leg 3D Printer in your supply closet — is still best??
