Barriers to adopting Additive Manufacturing in healthcare: An analysis towards their mitigation

Additive Manufacturing (AM) is transforming healthcare by producing customised and intricate medical devices that were previously impossible to produce using traditional manufacturing systems. However, despite its significant potential, the healthcare industry observes obstacles when deploying AM technologies, which need to be carefully addressed. Our objective is to identify the major barriers, along with their respective intensities and causal relationships, as determined by experts chosen for this study, to facilitate the successful adoption of AM in the healthcare sector. With the help of literature review and experts' opinion, Best Worst Method (BWM) and Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL), is employed an integrated hybrid MCDM technique, for identifying the intensity and examine the causal relationships of barriers, including four main barriers and their respective fifteen sub-barriers for implementing AM in healthcare. The expert’s opinion and sensitivity analysis finally confirm the robustness and reliability of our framework’s dependability. Based on the results obtained from the BWM method, it can be revealed that “Technical Expertise Shortages” is the most critical barrier. The results obtained through the DEMATEL application identify “Printer and Technology limitations” as the most influencing barrier and “Mechanical Properties Limitations” as the most influenced barrier, which belong to the main barriers “Technical Barriers” and “Material and Design Constraints,” respectively, with barrier “Quality Control Issues” having the maximum number of relationships with other barriers. This research adopts a novel approach to evaluating the barriers to AM in healthcare and their causal relationships, which can help healthcare professionals develop efficient and effective strategies for adopting AM in healthcare. This work may lead to optimal outcomes, resulting in advancements and innovations in the medical field through the adoption of AM.