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.
Why isn't all medical equipment open source? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm glad there's some people in this world who see sense rather than paychecks.
Really internet? (Score:4, Insightful)
We can come up with a million dollars to make a sequel to one of the worst games of all time, Myst, and we can't come up with $22,000 to actually change the world?
Re:Why isn't all medical equipment open source? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Why isn't all medical equipment open source? (Score:4, Insightful)
In the US "maximize the revenue of medical providers and vendors" is how we roll.
That's why in the US there's almost no money spent educating people on basic health and nutrition, minimal regulation to protect our food supplies, and $billions spent marketing fast food that's causing massive health problems and early deaths for millions of Americans. But businesses in the healthcare business are making record profits. Yay!
Re:umm, ok...? (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's a medical device that meets none of the standards of today, and it has bugs that need to be worked out.
There's a difference between "meets none of the standards" and "compliant, but untested".
Please don't sell something short by making unwarranted accusations.
Re:Why isn't all medical equipment open source? (Score:5, Insightful)
A cynic would point out that the cost to develop these devices is very high, and companies must recoup their losses.
A mathematician would point out that, from a game-theory point of view, having one group of people come up with safety requirements without any burden of cost for the implementation of those requirements leads to stifling over-regulation.
Specifically, this leads to "safety at any cost", when in reality the cost of safety should be compared to other costs.
Some wrong assumptions made in comments thus far.. (Score:4, Insightful)
I have been a certified/licensed EMT for over 10 years.
"Medical devices are expensive to make."
For many commonly-used devices (ECG, pulse oximeter, etc.), the level of technology implemented is magnitudes less than that of a decent smartphone. Sure, these aren't mass market items--but I'm also hard pressed to understand why it doesn't make sense to have an alternative to a LifePak which easily costs $15K+. Case in point: the AED you can easily buy from Costco in the neighborhood of $1K--and has lots of sophisticated logic. Just because the thing has blinky lights and makes "bing" noises doesn't mean it should be exorbitantly priced.
"People need a manufacturer big enough to sue."
Circular reasoning on the best of days. Does a commercial implementer of this device need a legal team? Yes. Is the pragmatic implementation of a device at lower cost that's reliable and lawsuit-resistant possible? Absolutely.
Re:Why isn't all medical equipment open source? (Score:5, Insightful)
In the US "maximize the revenue of medical providers and vendors" is how we roll.
Excuse me, but you're wrong. Very. Wrong. You think your doctors, nurses, etc., have an easy time of it? Let me break it down for you:
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. In 2009. You may have heard; tuition has been showing double-digit percentage gains every year since. But let's ignore that. Now you'll need another five years of surgical residency training. Yay! You get to start making money here! Er, $56,000 a year average. Great, right? Nope. That average salary comes with the expectation of up to eighty hours a week. Rumor has it the government plans on putting restrictions on this; if that happens, your 5 years just became about 7. Fun fact: Most residents defer their student loans during this time period (did you say compound interest? Oh yeah baby!). There's another cost too: Medical malpractice insurance. It's quite a bit higher for residents, but let's say you make it all the way out into the field. Yay! You're a doctor! A prestigious position where you make so much money even Tony Stark would nod his head approvingly. Well... actually, no. For all this work; you can now earn $156,000 a year as a pediatrician or family practitioner. Nice, huh? Not so fast there, sunshine: The government wants its due: Your takehome is now about $4022 biweekly, or a take home of $104,572 per year. Om nom nom! And don't even think about trying to get a specialist job for another 4-8 years.
Oh, and now that you can pay those student loans you might have forgotten about? on a 10 year repayment plan, your monthly loan payment will be $1,795.25 or thereabouts. That's $21,543 per year. Sooo now your take home is down to $83,029. But wait, there's more: Medical malpractice insurance to the tune of around $3,000 per year. Burp. $80k.
So after 11 years of hard work, maybe more, you can finally sit back and enjoy your first year's wages. You probably won't reach parity with your non-college educated peers that are making median income for another 7 years, but hey -- it's a prestigious line of work. Oh, I should mention one more thing: Thanks to the medicare crisis, your salary's probably going to drop by 15-20% over the next 7 years because of all those old people that are going to no longer be contributing anything to the economy except racking up medical bills and passing on their massive consumer debt (which eclipses the national debt, by the way -- you think the government is bad at managing their checkbook, wait until you see what the Boomers did with theirs) to those still able to work. And you can bet the top earners -- of which you are now in that category despite your own high debt load, are going to be paying for.
And to use your own words, "That's why in the US there's almost no money spent educating people on basic health and nutrition" ... except that's a lie. We do educate them, they just don't listen. Not that it would matter much at this point even if we shovelled piles of cash by the dump truck load into our public schools... because the Boomers bled us dry, and there's nobody investing in infrastructure or anything anymore. They lived beyond their means, and I sincerely doubt America will recover, at least not in our lifetimes. Get used to each generation earning less than the previous for the next 70 years or so.
A good start (Score:5, Insightful)
But only a start. Researchers using - it was either 48 or 64 leads - were able to identify specific muscles that were showing abnormalities long before those abnormalities turned into organ failure. Isolating problems to that degree just by collecting more of the same data would seem a great way to help prevent problems serious enough to show up on a conventional system ever developing in the first place.
In other words, why not turn thus from being open source medicine into an open source debugger? Why let things get to the point where medicine, rather than our own creativity is needed?
Re:Why isn't all medical equipment open source? (Score:5, Insightful)
Profits are down for medial practices. They've skyrocketed for device manufacturers and the pharmaceutical industry. It's a mixed bag for hospitals.
Computers and electronics have brought costs down everywhere they've been applied except medicine. There they have boosted profits but haven't benefited the consumer.
There is no reason equipment used in non-emergency practice needs to be built (and paid for) like lives hang in the balance. You could afford to throw away a LOT of failed ECGs that cost hundreds before reaching the price of a single current model. It's not as if a malfunction will cause it to display a normal ECG when the patient isn't normal.
Regulations and lawsuits are a popular excuse for gouging but it just doesn't hold water.
As for the link you provided, if the equipment had been less expensive, the man might have gotten his test sooner and tragedy avoided. Otherwise the problem had nothing to do with the quality of equipment at all. It's down to medical judgement and dumb luck.
Re:Why isn't all medical equipment open source? (Score:2, Insightful)
You misunderstand the system. These high costs of becoming a doctor serve as indoctrination,
What the fuck man? Seriously... you're signing up to pull parts of cars out of people. You're gonna tell someone they have cancer and 3 months to live. You're gonna be explaining to someone the surgery didn't go well and they're going to be leaking shit out of their ass for the rest of their life. Or that you have to amputate their leg. Or that they have AIDS. You think people sign up for that so they can be indoctrinated? And you think I don't understand? Fuck you man. Fuck you and the horse you rode in on! These people bust their asses for long hours for years, dealing with blood, guts, shit, and gore, out of a genuine conviction that life is sacred. And you come here and you shit on that to serve your own political needs? FUCK. YOU.
The high costs are because they need to be highly trained, there is no margin for error, because unlike your job, when they fuck up, they have to bury their mistakes. So don't you dare twist around a profession that sooner or later, you're gonna need because that's what they do. They don't judge. They heal drug dealers and terrorists, and saints and grade school teachers. That's their job. That's what they do. No politics. No bullshit. Just the job. The job of saving lives.
Re:Why isn't all medical equipment open source? (Score:2, Insightful)
Medicine amounts to a custom job performed by a highly trained specialist. Prices will vary based on geography, supplier contracts, predominant payer (e.g. specific insurer or medicare). and how the individual doctor practices (e.g. some prefer expensive new drugs/devices, others are more conservative, and still others are downright paranoid with tests). A simple coke will vary in price by an order of magnitude between stores, so why is it surprising that one hospital charges $1,000 for an MRI while another charges $3,000? Something like a cholecystectomy will vary a heck of a lot more, given how complicated the case was and what equipment the surgeon prefers to use.