Paging Dr. MacGyver: Maker Movement Comes To Medical Gear

eggboard writes "The maker movement has started to rapidly turn to medical gear, especially in developing nations. The early results are quite marvelous, but there are a ton of concerns, too. The pace of change is incredibly fast. From the article: '[Many people] without any without any formal medical training—can take advantage of access to global supply chains, cutting-edge medical knowledge, and recent leaps in design and fabrication technology that have made the prototyping process faster, cheaper, and simpler than ever before. Even as concerns about safety and liability are only starting to be addressed, medical inventors and other technical tinkerers are already improving and saving lives—sometimes their own.'"

Re:Hard to see this flourishing in USA

[TWX]

"Makers" in my view are predominately a bunch of wannabes; excited and enthusiastic but lacking in real capabilities. They may have an idea for something, but often they have no idea how to go about designing and building it, have to rely on the manufacturing expertise and trades of others, and yet think that they're really accomplishing something.

This is only going to be worse in medical spheres. "People" shouldn't play with nuclear materials, if they're serious about it then once they've received formal training they should form a legal entity in the form of a company, follow basic handling and exposure rules, and conduct thoughtfully designed experiments to determine the outcomes. We learned about playing with nuclear materials in the form of deaths of many, many people that didn't know about the dangers; I expect any random untrained person to be just as bad today.

As for myself, I'm not a "Maker". I have a workshop, I work on things. Sometimes my friends come over and help, sometimes I go over to their workshops to help them. I know that I'm not saving the world when I work on something, and very likely what I'm working on will only benefit me or my household. I'm not deluding myself that somehow my tinkering or puttering around will affect anyone besides myself. Applying a label besides "hobbyist" is stupid. If people want to learn how to build or modify things, then start by tinkering and don't throw stupid labels on it like it actually means something, it doesn't mean squat.

Re:"Concerns"

[Ihlosi]

"How DARE they build a prosthetic with a cheap 3D printer!?" "But it might be DANGEROUS!"

I'm sure if those "entrenched interests" weren't familiar with multi-million dollar lawsuits, they'd use cheap 3D printers to build prosthetics, too.

Oh, and might I interest you in a used Therac-25?