The development of technology is so integral when it comes to healthcare because diseases are evolving all the time and different kinds of approaches need to be put into place in order to give better care to patients. Starting in the 1980’s, the scientific and medical communities have worked together in dedicating many resources for development strategies pertaining to tissue replacement. This was started because there is a current organ shortage in the medical community. A relatively new approach to tissue replacement is 3D organ printing and it is inkjet based that involves layering cells. Unfortunately, we still have not been able to make the first 3D bioprinter due to this method being an experimental one. Many experiments and techniques …show more content…
In order to receive an organ, one must be signed up with UNOS and then is put on the list. UNOS is a region based system and multiple states from a region share organs. For example, if a patient from Nevada is on the top of the list and is in need of a heart, there might be not be a heart available in the state. Therefore, a heart from California, which shares the region with Nevada, could be flown over to the patient in need. And so even though a patients are from California, they could get organs from Nevada, Texas, etc. A patient’s ranking on the list is often unpredictable because new patients are always being placed on the list and it is not surprising if a person’s position on the list goes down because of a patient being in a worse condition, is placed higher than them. The fact of the matter is that too many people need organs and there are just not enough organs circulating, causing them to perish while on the list. Although other ways to obtain organs would be from friend or family donations. Barnatt discusses in “3D Printing: The Next Industrial Revolution,” that “If this happens-and bioprinting pioneers expect that it will within two decades-then the development of 3D printing may cut organ donor waiting lists to zero…” Many experts believe that in a decade or two, 3D organ printing will become a reality and the outcome of this technology would completely remove the patient waiting