Your
medication could be printed on demand with a 3-D printer if the brainchild of
Lee Cronin comes to fruition. In an interview with the Guardian, he lays out
one of his plans for your personalized medication that he is working on in the
depths of Glasgow (1).
With
a cheap 3-D printer using bathroom sealant, he is printing out interconnected reaction
chambers with feed tubes for reactants to combine molecules into different
ones. His reported vision is to have reaction chambers with catalyst embedded
in the printing with dimensions and inputs designed around reaction conditions
and rates so that the computer would feed in the appropriate inputs as the
system flowed through to give an output of the desired chemical.
Definitely
blue skies, but a gorgeous bright blue if he can pull it off. You might not
need one in your kitchen, but in your local pharmacy, clinic, or doctor’s
office, you would just need your smartphone with a Bluetooth connection to
print out your prescription in chemical format from a pharmaceutical company
defined protocol with no delay, no chance of counterfeit or material damaged in
transit across the globe.
Although
3-D printing has the buzz currently, 2-D printing opportunities haven’t been
exhausted. When are we going to see a printer for tattoo studios that would
allow more elaborate art work to be designed, scanned into a computer and then
printed out on the appropriate body part. The contours would have to be scanned
first so the printer knew your shape, but that’s just a minor engineering task.
Imagine if you will, the possibility of having an accurate copy of the Mona
Lisa smiling from your chest at the passers-by as you languish casually on the
beach.
