Case Study: Harvard’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center achieves half-million validated 3D-printed COVID-19 test swabs with Stratasys

Ramping up to half a million 3D printed test swabs

Healthcare Provider faced critical shortages of PPE and nasopharyngeal (NP) swabs during the COVID‑19 pandemic as traditional supply chains broke down and demand surged. Stratasys stepped in using its Origin One 3D printer and P3 programmable photopolymerization technology, selecting LOCTITE MED412 medical‑grade material to rapidly design and validate a one‑piece, FDA‑compliant 3D‑printed NP swab for clinical use.

Stratasys dedicated Origin One printers to three shifts, printing 800 swabs per build and shipping over half a million fully validated, packaged and sterilized swabs in eight weeks; the swabs passed phase‑3 clinical trials at BIDMC with high concordance to traditional swabs. By eliminating tooling and assembly, Stratasys enabled fast iteration, scalable production, improved specimen collection with a lattice tip and a measurable, rapid response to urgent testing needs while allowing production to be scaled back as conventional supply recovered.