New uses for the humble inkjet printer October 22, 2008 13:57 by John Sollars

Both HP and Epson have been in the news this week, with medical breakthroughs powered by their respective inkjet technologies.

First HP announced that they had licensed their inkjet technology to Home Dialysis Plus, Ltd who plan to develop and build home dialysis machines based on printer technology.  Printers after all are just like dialysis machines in that both require on the fly mixing and delivery of chemicals.  In the case of dialysis, its water, saline and particular kinds of medicine.  In addition, HP’s smart memory chip technology will ensure that the correct dialysate prescription is being delivered consistently so dialysis can take place while the patient is sleeping.

Home Dialysis expect to release their first products using the HP technology sometime in 2010.

In a totally separate development, Professor Makoto Nakamura of the University of Toyama in Japan has developed a 3D printer capable of printing layers of living cells which can be 'built' up into living organs.  Whilst Prof Nakamura says that it may take him 20 years to be able to create a living heart he has already succeeded in building a tube with living cells,  It measures one millimetre in diameter and has double walls with two different kinds of cells, similar to the three-layer structure in human blood vessels.

The tubes are made by a 3D Inkjet bioprinter that Nakamura's team developed in a three year project completed earlier this year at Kanagawa Academy of Science and Technology, but the original idea stemmed from the realisation that droplets from inkjet printers were about the same size as human cells, which are as small as 10 micrometres in diameter each.  He borrowed an Epson printer in 2002 from work and tried to eject cells with it, but the inkjet nozzle got clogged, so he - like many of us before and since phoned the companies help line, telling the operator that he wanted to print cells - and idea she politely dismissed!.  He did not give up though and eventually found an Epson official who showed interest and agreed to give him technical support.

In 2003, Nakamura confirmed that cells survived even after the printing process, becoming one of the first researchers in the world to unveil a 3D structure with real living cells using inkjet technology.

I wonder what sort of cartridges we will be stocking here at Stinkyink in the next ten years, print your own heart?, or bags of dialysis solution? - fascinating