*NEWS*HP EXPANDS INKJETS TO SAVE LIVES

[Anonymous]

HP expands inkjet technology to save lives
CORVALLIS
– That old inkjet printer sitting in your home can do more than turn
out letters.Hewlett Packard is expanding its market beyond office
equipment and are now targeting the medical community. You may never
look at your inkjet printer the same way again.”From photo printers
where you can get a picture of your baby,” said HP Printing Manager Joe
Dody.

To a medical advancement.
“This idea of a cartridge
that has inks in it, we have retooled that to be able to print drugs,”
said Casey Miller of HP Business Development.Dody and Miller helped
develop a way to precisely place a drug onto stents for heart
patients.”You have thousands of nozzles used to print millions of drops
on a page,” said Miller. “We can take this technology and print drugs
on the stent itself.”A stent is a mesh tube used to unblock clogged
arteries. Dr. Rick Padgett with the Oregon Heart and Vascular Center of
Eugene said one problem with stents is the high chance of the vessels
becoming blocked again.

Miller said the new technology can reduce that risk.
“The
benefit of that, is improving their stent and the safety of the
device.”HP engineers play out their unique innovations in a Corvallis
lab they refer to as the ‘sandbox.'”It’s taken many many years to
evolve the technology to build these print heads,” said Dody.

He
explained each print head applying medicine to stents, or ink on paper,
takes a few weeks to make.”We’re putting electrical circuits on them
and we’re putting fine physical features that allow us to route small
amounts of ink to these chambers.”While hundreds of workers and
machines produce the tiny element used in standard printer cartridges,
and soon in heart patients, Hewlett Packard is reaping the benefits.”So
for us, because there’s a lot of value there, we can offer our
technology, provide them a benefit and also get good profits,” said
Dody.The inkjets can also code prescription drugs to help distinguish
‘real’ from ‘counterfeit.’HP said this is only the beginning of their
mark in the medical industry. The company plans to unveil another
innovation this spring.

[Author]

January 28, 2008 at 2:03 PM