12-Lead Clinical ECG Design Open Sourced; Supports Tablets, Too 134
New submitter isza writes "MobilECG is probably the first open source clinical-grade electrocardiograph with simultaneous 12-lead recording and Android support. It has been designed to meet all the relevant medical standards (ISO 60601-1, etc.). Manufacturing cost @ 1000 pieces: ~$110. I had worked at a medical device company designing clinical electrocardiographs for three years. Fed up with the unreasonably high price, cumbersome design, and dishonest distribution practices of clinical ECG machines, I started working on a high-quality ECG that is different. After a couple of failed attempts to get funding for the expensive certification process and completely running out of funds, I decided to publish everything under a license that allows others to finalize and manufacture it or reuse parts of it in other projects." From the project page linked: "The software is licensed under WTFPL, the hardware under CERN OHL 1.2," and a few words of disclaimer: "Note: the design is functional but unfinished, it needs additional work before it can be certified. There are also some known bugs in it. Most of the software is unimplemented." Conventional crowdfunding may have fallen short, but Isza has proposed an interesting bargain for working on the project again himself: that will happen if he raises via donation half the amount of his original $22,000 investment.
Re:Why isn't all medical equipment open source? (Score:5, Informative)
The study of medicine has only one goal. Improve the life expectancy of human beings.
I believe the flaw in your argument is in this statement.
You're both wrong. That's not why our health care system went to hell. It's insurance companies. They're turning a profit on human misery. But ignoring that side of the equation, there's also excessive regulation. This article talks about how low-cost it is to actually make the equipment. And they're right. Meeting the standards is pretty easy. But that's not where the costs are. As I'm sure the designers know, or will soon discover, it's getting certification for their equipment. Certification is the reason why a table-side bed in a hospital costs $500, but you can pick up the exact same item, for home use, off Amazon for about $35 plus S&H.
If you want to fix the health care system, you're going to have to do something you don't want to do: You're going to have to give up on capitalism. Private-run insurance, private-run health care, private-run... kill it. Burn it all to the ground. Europeans figured out a long time ago that capitalism is good with non-essential commodities, but it's absolute shit with natural resources or essential goods and services that have a non-trivial cost. Electricity. Telecommunications. Gas. Internet. Health care. Transportation. These are not things that capitalism has done well with; The owners of these key resources make a fuckton of money, but the rest of us are enslaved to poverty to do so. Capitalism only works when there's a natural tendancy towards competition, and there isn't any in those areas. The invisible hand can kiss my invisible ass, because it doesn't work the way people have been led to believe. It works well much of the time. It works very well when the cost of entry into the market is low and there's no natural monopoly (like land, to use the quintessential example). But to say it always works, or to try and shoehorn it into markets and situations that it has a poor history with, is stupid. Nothing always works. Ever. Capitalism is no different -- put it to good use where it is efficient and effective, but it's not a "spray on all surfaces" sort of ideology. In fact, no such ideology has ever been created.
Re:12-lead? (Score:4, Informative)
Okay, this may be a stupid question, but I only count 10 leads in the pictures of the device, so where/what are the other two? Grounds?
lead != wire in this context, it refers to the electrical paths through the body between various parings of the 10 wires.
Re:Why isn't all medical equipment open source? (Score:2, Informative)
Wanna be a doctor? You're going to need four years of medical school. Cha-ching: $156,000 was the average student loan debt for a graduate.
Wrong it's 8 years for a doctor, it's 4 years just to become an LVN (Licensed Vocational Nurse) while to become an RN/NP (Registered - Nurse Practicioner) or a PA (Physicians Assistant) Takes 6 years. As The main difference between the RN/NP/PA is the 2 years residency requirement for that Coveted MD (Doctor) title. The $150,000 is for a Nurse/PA. A Doctor has over a quarter million dollars in debt by the time they graduate (don't forget Malpractice Insurance is part of that debt).
Tack on another 4 years for specialty school (Orthepedic/Neurology) and you're now talking a full Million Dollars in debt along with 12 years of schooling before you even begin making the money needed to repay that debt. Now there are several programs that can and do make it feasible for folks to become doctors but they're either the Militay or offer to discharge a full year of debt for every year served in an under-served region (rural) and let me tell you, docs in those programs don't make nearly as much as private practice in New York, San Francisco, D.C.. and other large metro areas.
And as one of those folks who has to have that education, where is it? I've never seen one lick of it and I've been insulin dependent for the last 5 years. Education? Depends on where in hell you're at. I live in a rural area and the medical offerings are slim to fucking hours in the ER if you're sick. We've got 100k people in the region but spread out over an area of 200 square miles (50x4) Yea, we have lots of doctors here. Like hell, it's a god damn 60+ mile drive from where I live to the nearest metro region that has plenty of docs and that's only got a population of half a million (5x what we have).
If we do have docs, then it takes a week to get an appointment that means wasting at least 3 hours on due to the backlog and it isn't getting any better.
Posting AC to preserve Mods
Fast Turtle
Re:Why isn't all medical equipment open source? (Score:4, Informative)