BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) – A new partnership on the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus will help doctors solve complex cases and provide patients with more individualized care.

The Jacobs Institute is partnering with Stratasys, a 3D printing company.

The non-profit was able to use a $200 thousand grant from the James H. Cummings Foundation to purchase the new Object 500 Connex 3. It allows doctors to create more accurate medical models.

“They used to be silicon based. It was a complicated process,” Dr. Adnon Siddiqui, the chief medical officer at Jacobs and vice chairman and professor of neurology at UB said. “These procedures with these materials that chip has really worked out with Stratasys really make it feel like the real thing.”

The new printer can produce complex medical models in different colors and materials.

It has only been in operation at the Jacobs Institute for a week and doctors have already used it.

Dr. Vijay Iyer used the 3D printer to create the heart model of a patient from their CTscan. He said the medical image helped his team create the best strategy for the patient’s surgery. “We had to make a couple of decisions about valve sizing. How were we going to get this valve up and what kind of wire were we going to use? We actually changed the plan based on what we originally decided versus after we had practiced on this model,” Dr. Iyer, an associate professor of cardiology at UB said.

Doctors, researchers, and students on the medical campus will now use this technology to continue to create new therapies and devices.

Stratasys is also creating a Printer Center of Excellence at the nonprofit. The company is based out of Minnesota and Israel, but when they came to Buffalo they knew they wanted to set up the center here.

“What is happening here is a new model that we see evolving in medicine and Buffalo is on the front lines,” Scott Radar, the general manager of medical solutions at Stratasys said.

The partnership between Stratasys and the Jacobs Institute is for two years.