An engineered 3D-printed realistic patient simulator: market assessment

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Cardiovascular disease is the first cause of death in Canada, in the United States and most occidental countries.Accurate diagnosis and treatment require high performance medical devices and continuous high-qualitymedical training. This is becoming hardly achievable using the "standard" medical education model.Significant changes have been recently affecting the world of medicine: 1) an important reduction in physicianteaching time; 2) a lower availability of patients as educational resources, 3) more strict medicolegal systems;4) accreditation and regulatory bodies putting more emphasis on continuous maintenance of competence. As aconsequence, relying on real patients is becoming a less desirable option for resident training and maintenanceof physician competence, leading to a significant increase in the demand for high-fidelity simulators. Fromanother side, newly developed implantable medical devices are required to undergo an extensive series ofbench testing. This includes not only performance testing of the device itself but also of its delivery system.Currently existing cardiac simulators are, however, not optimized for advanced medical training and forclose-to-real bench testing of medical devices. We have developed the first realistic complete heart simulatorcapable of reproducing normal and pathological conditions. The simulator is capable of reproducing normaland abnormal physiological pressure and flow conditions in anatomically correct heart cavities, providing amore realistic picture of the complex environment that will be experienced by the implantable medical deviceand by the medical trainee during the implantation procedure. The most important markets for our technologyare the growing markets for medical simulators and for implantable cardiovascular medical devices. Theobjective of this market assessment grant application is to define and size the most suitable market for ourtechnology before re-submitting our unsuccessful I2I phase I application