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Bioprinting is a new area of research and engineering that involves printing devices that deposit biological material. The long-term goal is that the technology could be used to create replacement organs or even entire organisms from raw biological materials.

Today, bioprinters are in the development stage and primarily are used as scientific tools. They lack the speed and fine-tuning necessary for commercial deployment, though that day might not be far off. The first bioprinters deposited drops as small as 100 picoliters (by comparison, the volume of a cell is around 3 picoliters and the best inkjet printers can deposit drops 1-5 picoliters in volume) at a rate of tens of thousands per second. More recent bioprinters can extrude individual cells from a micropipette at a lower speed.