Coronavirus: Cochin hospital to produce 3D medical equipment that is lacking

Text by: RFI Follow

In Paris, the largest 3D printing platform for medical equipment in Europe was launched in just 5 days. About sixty machines were installed at the Cochin hospital with one objective: to rapidly manufacture large quantities of parts for the medical equipment that patients and caregivers will need throughout France.

Publicity

Sixty 3D printers have been installed in the old chapter house of Cochin hospital. Day and night, these machines - the size of which is comparable to that of a small refrigerator - will produce hundreds of plastic parts which are starting to be sorely lacking. Such as protective visors for the face, valves for artificial respirator, handles or even intubation equipment.

In practice, it is the agency for the equipment of health products that directly orders by providing the list of parts required and once the 3D plans are obtained, the printers get to work.

A technique that offers much greater responsiveness than if it were necessary to adapt production lines from factories specializing in the manufacture of other components. Only downside, these 3D printers only use plastic and therefore cannot print protective masks .

At the origin of this initiative, the Faculty of Medicine of Paris-Descartes in association with the Public Assistance-Hospitals of Paris (APHP). But the manufactured parts should be ventilated throughout France.

► Read also: Coronavirus: saturated hospitals in Paris, nursing staff testify

The financing of the project and the operating costs for the next four months were provided by the luxury group Kering, owned by the Frenchman François-Henri Pinault. The total amount of the transaction has not been disclosed.

Our selection on SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus

• Listen to Infos coronavirus , our daily chronicle on the pandemic

• Analysis - What strategies to deal with the Covid-19 epidemic?

• Practical questions:
→ What is the lifespan of the virus?
→ Who are the vulnerable people ?
→ Quarantine, what are we talking about ?
→ How do you treat Covid-19 patients?
→ How the Institut Pasteur hopes to find a vaccine

• Doctors' answers to your questions about the Covid-19

Find all our articles, reports, chronicles and programs on the coronavirus by clicking here .

See also our contents on containment .

Newsletter With the Daily Newsletter, find the headlines directly in your mailbox

Follow all international news by downloading the RFI application

• France
• Coronavirus
• Health and Medicine
• Research

On the same subject

Coronavirus: war of masks is declared

Politics, the choice of the week

How Emmanuel Macron reflects on the "day after"

France: in nursing homes, "a constant fight" against the coronavirus