Who needs a pharmacy when you've got a 3D printer?

The potential of 3D printing technology continues to impress, with 3D printers out there that can now print cars, houses, body parts, hair, food, and a lot more.

One of the most promising spaces with this technology has been in the medical industry and whether that means using it to print braces, skin tissue, an artificial cornea, or prosthetics etc, there's plenty that can be done.

Now, researchers say that they might be able to use this technology to print drugs. For example, pharmacists and doctors might be able to employ this technology to stop outbreaks, because they are able to produce the drugs much faster.

Researchers have discovered a way to synthesize medicine by using 3D printing technology. They outfitted an existing 3D printer, that costs around $2,000, so that it could synthesize chemicals and they discovered that they could create pharmaceuticals from widely available starting compounds.

The process that they've come up with which they've been working on for several years now, detailed in the journal Science, could potentially enable anyone to produce their own drugs.

And this could really change things in the way of enabling people at home to create their own drugs, or by helping to address outbreaks etc as mentioned above. Not only that, but it could be greatly beneficial in helping to produce medications that are unique, exact specifications, and have been tailored to the specific individual patient and their needs.

It can provide a new way to create medicine that might have otherwise been too difficult to create using traditional production techniques that are currently available today.

Rather than having to ship medicine overseas, it could simply be printed at the needed location if they had the 3D printing technology.

Researchers warn of the risks that come along with this sort of freedom, just as they have warned about 3D printing technology enabling consumers to print their own weapons. For now, it's still a long way off from the market and there are many regulatory hoops to get through first before it could become a reality.

If it does make it to market, could it help to drastically reduce health costs in many ways? It's already helped some people to be able to save a lot by printing their own braces and a myriad of other helpful items. It's exciting to think about the potential for 3D printing and the many ways that it might be able to improve our standard of living, boosting efficiency for many different industry spaces.

Pics:
businesspost.ng
CNBC

Sources:
https://www.engadget.com/2018/01/22/3d-printers-reactionware-roll-your-own-drugs/
https://www.techspot.com/news/72866-researchers-have-discovered-way-synthesize-medicine-using-3d.html
http://www.pharmatimes.com/magazine/2018/janfeb/3d_printing_drugs_more_precise,_more_personalised
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/01/you-could-soon-be-manufacturing-your-own-drugs-thanks-3d-printing

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