Smart implants are not just another advancement in medical technology. They are the next frontier in human health, offering real-time monitoring, adaptive treatments, and a level of personalized medicine that once belonged to science fiction. But the promise of AI-driven implants comes with risks too big to ignore.

Recent successes in cultivating human heart tissue, knee cartilage, and pharmaceutical crystals in space have relied on technology that was initially developed decades ago with support from NASA.

A team led by Emily Davidson has reported that they used a class of widely available polymers called thermoplastic elastomers to create soft 3D printed structures with tunable stiffness.

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) and Emory University have developed a 3D-printed heart valve made of a bioresorbable polymer. Most heart valve implants currently are made from animal tissue and last only 10 to 15 years before needing to be replaced.

With fewer than 500 board-certified adult CHD cardiologists in the U.S., specialized care is not always readily available and nearly half of CHD patients are lost to follow-up after adolescence, with many having not seen a cardiologist in over five years. This lack of consistent oversight can leave adults with CHD vulnerable to complications that could have been proactively identified and even prevented with more proactive management.