Student Research Raises Questions About Patient Privacy on 3D Printing Platforms

• A student researcher at Indiana University Indianapolis has uncovered what she believes is a significant patient privacy issue involving medical anatomy files shared on public 3D printing websites. Salma Kherallah,...

A student researcher at Indiana University Indianapolis has uncovered what she believes is a significant patient privacy issue involving medical anatomy files shared on public 3D printing websites. Salma Kherallah, a junior studying at the School of Health and Human Sciences, recently won first place at the university’s Undergraduate Research Conference after examining thousands of anatomy-related files posted online for download and 3D printing. Her project, “The Availability of Potentially Unethically Sourced 3D Anatomy Models on Peer-to-Peer Websites,” was selected among 200 others. Working with Andrew Cale, an assistant professor at the university’s Department of Anatomy, Cell Biology and Physiology, Kherallah reviewed roughly 3,000 files from peer-to-peer 3D printing platforms. The