We had a chat with Henry Pinchbeck, CEO and Founder of 3D LifePrints, who created The Distancer with Alder Hey Children’s Hospital to reduce the spread of Covid-19. Read on to discover what they’ve learnt from this challenging period.
Can you tell us in a few words what 3D LifePrints does?
We're a medical 3D printing company, which means we make patient-specific medical devices. We design a patient-specific medical device which we then manufacture and give to the surgeon to use in surgery. Effectively, personalised surgery.
Has the pandemic impacted on your work at all?
Yeah, in a really big way. You can't do personalised surgery if there is no surgery! The cancellation of all elective surgery has all but stopped our business for the past 4 months, which was really difficult, so that had a huge effect. We have been able to repurpose the business in certain ways; we've done similar things that don't involve elective surgery, and that's how we've been able to keep the wheels turning. For example, rather than making patient-specific medical devices, we've made a lot more training devices. Instead of surgeons using them for patients, they’d use them to practice surgery or for training junior surgeons. We've been doing a lot of development work as well.
Great, thanks! Can you tell us if you created a particular product or service in response to the pandemic?
Yes, we have. We were involved in lots of potential projects at the start of the pandemic, and we pursued several of them initially. For example, we looked into a device which would convert a snorkel into a respirator with surgeons in Oxford! They wanted us to design and manufacture a piece to connect the snorkel to the air filter. We agreed, but only under strict conditions. We went all the way through the process with them. It turned out that the mask itself couldn't meet the strict criteria that was required for PPE. This was a good learning exercise for us. I think one thing that particular project taught us was just because there's a crisis, it doesn't mean that you should start manufacturing the first thing that comes to hand. One project that did succeed was called the Distancer [An ID holder / door opening device to reduce Covid-19 contamination ]. A surgeon called Hennessey at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital had the concept and we worked together to develop and manufacture it.
Are you going to carry on providing the Distancer?
For the time being, yes. We’ll see how it goes. It’s doing reasonably well, and I think we could do with marketing it a bit better which is not what we're good at. But, I did have one call with KPMG (who were doing our accounts), and we got talking about the Distancer, and KPMG bought distancers! So sometimes little conversations turn into important things.
What do you see for the future of 3D LifePrints beyond the Distancer?
The past weeks have been so different already! Surgery has started again, so this may be one of our best months ever in terms of work coming in. We're going to be really busy, which is great. And with that, we’ll hopefully continue into the back end of this year, unless and until they stop elective surgeries again. What I'm hoping is, even if we enter a lockdown phase again, that health services are able to maintain a certain amount of service for people.
How has the response been from other health tech providers? Have you been in discussion with any peers?
The 3D printing community has really stepped up. Specifically, people who own 3D printers or do 3D printing have stepped up, repurposed and done a lot of work. I would say, a slight caveat from me is that if they're doing something that’s simplistic, it’s okay. But if someone's asking them to make medical devices, they need to be careful. Lots of 3D printing companies were making surgical masks and visors, some of that is absolutely fine and very useful. But when you start getting into more complex products that are governed by regulations, I think it's incumbent upon both the person requesting it and upon the provider of the service to question whether it’s right for them to provide this as a service. I do think lots of people have done incredible work in a short space of time.
Final question: Can you share with us any lessons you've learned, or a piece of advice you’d give to younger HealthTech startups on how to approach offering solutions or products to the NHS?
Yeah, I've got one which I think is useful: I would go and speak to the charities at the hospitals. Quite often, charities are prepared to pay for something that the main hospital won't pay for, on a trial basis. So if you find the right person within the hospital, like a surgeon or a clinician who's interested [in your product], you have yourself a clinical advocate within the Trust. You can then take that idea to the hospital, and even if they don’t want to pay for it, you can go to the charity, and you might get a yes.
Keep an eye out for the full interview in our upcoming annual report!
Interviewer: Sara El Sheekh
Words: Emily Lewis