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:4, Interesting)
Actually profits are down. LOTS of medical practices have sold out or gone bankrupt over the past 5 years.
Computers have not made your medical care cheaper. FDA approval for medical devices are not a walk in the park. Vendors take on a HUGE risk selling these devices and don't want to go to jail over a $10.00 device and neither does your doctor. EMR software for medical practices can be a pain and they are expensive. I suggest that anyone interested should, read Hacking Healthcare. It is a lot more complex than you would think.
Yes, fast food and bad eating habits are going to kill us all. I fight the habit off daily. But if you try to regulate or educate people on it you are labeled a socialist or something else. City of New York and now some place in Cali? Can't say I care if someone is eating badly or not until I think about the health care system we are going to now. Then I think about how I am actually paying for their bad choice as well as mine.
Now it is great that someone is working on an open source solution to lower the cost. But if it doesn't get certification, It will probably not get used. At least not in the U.S. no one wants to fight that battle in court when a mistake is made.
This has only reminded me of a recent court case.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/01/william-martinez-threesome-death-family-medical-malpractice-sreenivasulu-gangasani_n_1563247.html
Re:Why isn't all medical equipment open source? (Score:5, Interesting)
P.S. I can already hear the heads bubbling over of certain people because I mentioned regulation as being a problem, yet am suggesting institutionalizing health care. This is not the paradox you think it is: Much of our regulation is due to private interests demanding it. Just ask Tesla Motor Co. Canada, Spain, the UK, they've all done quite well at providing decent health care in an institutional capacity... though the UK system is showing signs of needing some attention due to neglect of late.
And yes, I know you can probably demonstrate any one of fifty different angles and case studies on how those systems are sub-optimal compared to ours. I answer with two statistics: Infant mortality in the United States, and current life expectancy. In those countries, they're going down, and up, respectively. In ours, the reverse is currently true. It's generally true that if you have money here and get sick, this is the best place to be. But in those countries, you don't get sick as often, because there's a focus on preventative care, not treatment. Here, specialists outnumber general practitioners about 3 to 1. There, the reverse is true.
If we look at it from a macro-perspective; At the societal level, their system is beating ours on both costs, and quality of life. And if the overall health of the general public, while maintaining reasonable costs, are your priorities, you cannot support our current privatized system.
Re:umm, ok...? (Score:5, Interesting)
Modern medicine works on the basis that dead people rarely sue. The same goes for other mission-critical systems like fly-by-wire avionics. To be fair (me? fair? well, it was bound to happen eventually), a lot of companies put in a lot of effort to do a good job. The problem is, if you're on life-support or flying at 20,000 feet, there is every probability that a software crash will be followed by a crash of another sort. There have been very close calls of this nature in the past.
But what would happen in the event of a fatal incident? In virtually all industries that use mission-critical systems, there are disclaimers and waivers that prohibit lawsuits.
Even in non-critical systems, EULAs invariably state the manufacturer/developer is not at fault, no matter what, even if they admit they are, and to use the system you have to agree to that. You aren't given a choice.
Open Source licenses often say the same, but Open Source allows you to validate the system to your satisfaction. You are prohibited from any code analysis and certain forms of runtime analysis with closed systems. Thus, although neither provide any form of warranty or fitness for use guarantees, you are capable of at least certifying open source as fit for use. No commercial product using computers will provide anything remotely close.
Re:Why isn't all medical equipment open source? (Score:3, Interesting)
You misunderstand the system. These high costs of becoming a doctor serve as indoctrination, making it very clear to any prospective doctor that this is not primarily about helping people, but primarily about making money. Sure, a few idealists that manage to keep their personal ethics intact remain, but the majority of prospective doctors gets the message loud and clear.
I do completely agree about your last statement though. The US population has become so anti-knowledge that even solid, well-researched and dependable information sitting in plain sight gets ignored by most. As to the money question in education, it is not a cost issue. Other countries manage to give children far better educations at significantly lower cost. That is why "shoveling piles of cash by the dump truck load into our public schools" would have no effect whatsoever. It is not a problem of funding. The problem is that the US does not understand what a good education is at this time. Not that it ever did, from what I can tell, indoctrination was always paramount over independent thinking, at least below the PhD level. And PhD students are (or were until recently) mostly imported, at least in the STEM area. The reason is that US educated students just do not cut it, except for a small minority. As far as I can tell, it is not a question of "recovering" either, more a question of starting to import all that foreign talent again. But with the reputation the US has these days, and with it becoming worse daily, I do not see that getting fixed for a long, long time, if ever. Your 70 years might be entirely realistic, but possibly with an economic crash in there as well.