3D Printed Medical Models Help Irish Startup axial3D Win Emerging Medtech Company of the Year Award

We first heard about Belfast-based healthcare technology firm axial3D, which is focused on the global adoption of 3D printing in the healthcare industry, last year, though it came on the 3D printing scene in early 2015. The startup’s patient-specific 3D printed medical models can be used to facilitate pre-operative planning, improve the outcome of surgeries, advance standards, and help both patients and doctors better understand ailments and treatments.

The Medtech startup uses patients’ CT, MRI, and PET scan data to create its bespoke, precise 3D printed medical models in an effort to personalize healthcare and make 3D printing accessible to the Medtech sector. Its models help to deliver, as axial3D put it, “personalized anatomical insights directly to a clinician using a combination of innovative software and expert services.”

While it hasn’t been around that long, axial3D has spent the last few years focused on growth, closing a successful investment round of seed funding in April of 2017, setting up its own scientific advisory board for automated medical 3D printing software, partnering with private, not-for-profit community healthcare system Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare (TMH) to ensure better patient outcomes in the neurosurgical services with its 3D printed medical models, and entering the Pitch3D! startup competition at this spring’s 3DHEALS conference, though it did not walk away the winner.

However, this wasn’t the case for long, as the Irish startup was honored as the winner of the Healthcare Application Award at the TCT Awards in September for the use of its 3D printed, pre-op planning model aids in a world-first surgery at Belfast City Hospital. Its winning streak continued this month, as axial3D was chosen as the ‘Emerging Medtech Company of the Year’ at the Irish Medtech Excellence Awards 2018: Medtech Rising, recently held in Cork.

“We are extremely proud to have won the prestigious award of ‘Emerging Medtech Company of the Year’ at this year’s Medtech Excellence Awards,” said Daniel Crawford, the Founder and CEO of axial3D. “3D printing is revolutionizing patient care in hospitals across the world. Having our work recognized at the Medtech Excellence Awards highlights the importance of our mission to improve the quality of care hospitals can provide by enhancing existing practices, giving their clinicians easy access to patient-specific 3D printed models.”

Jointly hosted by the Irish Medtech Association, Enterprise Ireland, and IDA Ireland, the Irish Medtech Excellence Awards are now in their 12th year. More than 38,000 people in over 450 companies are employed in the Medtech sector in Ireland, with expectations to add an additional 4,000 employees by the year 2020, and the island is home to the second largest employer of Medtech professionals in Europe, per capita.

The Irish Medtech Excellence Awards ceremony recognizes and celebrates the companies that are leaders in making the country one of the top locations in the world for Medtech. The Emerging Medtech Company of the Year awarded to axial3D this year is based on strength in the important areas of customer focus, innovation, and strategic vision.

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