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Vietnam Medic Makes Homemade Endoscope
Davian writes "As reported by the BBC a Vietnamese doctor has managed to create an endoscope using an apparatus consisting of lenses and a webcam, linked to a Pentium 4. Total cost of extra hardware - less than $1000." The doctor plans to also assist other local hospitals that are facing similar budgetary contraints.
I just hope that this webcam is a little smaller than the one sitting on top of my monitor.
$1000? For all the good that bit of cheap kit is going to do, he might as well shove it up his arse.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
And more importantly, will they use this new technology on Bill Gates?
Then we could certainly tell him to shove windows up his ass.
That's half the expense right there.
This is not meant to be a flame or troll activity, but surely if they wanted to keep the costs down they would not be using windows? Seems simple enough.
I'm also feeling quite odd about the pentium 4 ad statement there. It is connected to a computer, they can all do graphics manipulation these days. Seems we are still in the 'omgwtf pentium' age. Using another cpu would bring the price down yet further!
No seriously, this is some cool stuff and it's a creative way to deal with the problem. I'm curious how big the webcam in question is, since the article didn't really say unless I missed it on two read-throughs. (Early in the morning, you see.) Considering that I'm about to go out and do the same thing using $100,000+ in hardware today on a couple of patients, it's really interesting because this thing probably provides pictures that are almost as good, if not just as good.
Tomorrow some american company will sue him (and this will cost them a LOT more than $30000 * number of provinces in vietnam up front).
Gotta love this world we live in. Can't have people without money cured too, because if we do cure them, why would people with money pay for treatment ?
Just a thought
truth be told, that $30k price-tag is mostly profit for the med-co's currently stiffing american hospitals out of cheap, quality, medical equipment.
..
..
in vietnam they have no such compunction. they don't mind building things which work, for cheap, and not screwing their customers for every last penny they can
i say, great. american medical 'prowess' is propped up by insanely disproportionate profits. i daresay a few public hospitals in detroit could stand to DIY the ol' endoscope too, and save a few bucks for those AIDS drugs they've gotta stock up on in order to be 'qualified' for "Federal Support".
sheesh. no big surprise that things are cheaper outside of the worlds largest continent full of greedy, selfish pigs
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
nurse ! pass the duct tape !
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
This would have be REALLY useful when I networked the house - there were a couple of snags that if I could have seen round the bend... Ah well, what's wrong with a few more holes in the walls...
Puh-leez! The p0rn makers have been shoving cameras in orifices for years now. How is this new?
I mean, c'mon! Webcams have never been used for anything other than looking at peoples' private parts.
Athoret from the planet France, spoke to the press today. He stated that the union of ass-probing industries will not stand for allowing these home build devices to destroy their industry. His union will file for a complete ban on these devices. "We're working hard to feed our children, how can we allow the action of such inresposible people to damage our industry?" stated the angry Francian.
A couple of people have pointed out that not using windows would probably make it cheaper. Don't forget the guy isn't a computer expert. Its probably all that he already knows how to use. I think that the steps used here could be important for helping to lower the medical expenses in other countries. Its probably possible to make the equipment cheaper etc, but don't forget that its no use using a different system - if you don't know how to use it, or don't know the difference between different companies. Personally I'm wondering how effective the equipment is, its probably better than nothing, but how much can it detect, how invasive is it in comparison and when would it likely to be used.
bah.
That's one webcam link which will not be slashdotted.
For once, the goatse trolls may well be on-topic.
Unfortunately, I am not Wil Wheaton
In Soviet Russia, endoscope sees YOU!
In Korea, only the old people use endoscopes.
In Vietnam, you put it up other people's asses!
The most important part of an endoscope, that being the scope still needs to be bought. Now if the guy made the actual scope and not just the webcam adapter for the scope, then that would be truly impressive. once again i feel misled by slashdot because the title suggests the guy actually built an endoscope out of a webcam. Shame on you slashdot
Nuclear war would really set back cable. - Ted Turner
Ok, he managed to make a cheap endoscope. That's good and bad at the same time. Because a endoscope's purpose is to be inserted inside your body, especially inside supposedly sick bodies, it has to be steril so as to avoid contamination (AIDS anyone ?). Using an expensive endoscope (like in developped countries) forbids to use it once and dispose it. So endoscope are cleaned the best one can do without damaging it and re-used. This can lead to contaminations (in fact it's a cause for blood bank to refuse your blood). That's why a cheapper endoscope could be great for developped countries (on-time usage). But on the opposite it's not so great for second/third-world contries because I doubt a webcam is designed to withstand the heat, uv, and/or chemical used to clean the expensive endoscope, nor will it be disposed after use because cheap isn't there. This could be a major health problem. So I'm somewhat skeptical on the path taken by this doctor.
Anyone care to explain why this is modded down to troll, when it is nothing of the sort? Whos got the itchy trigger fingers today then.
a good friend who is a midwife, is going to work in rural portugual next year, and will be involved in opening a community-based birth-house. (sorry, i don't know what a geburtshaus is in english)
but some of the equipment that they need, such as a CTG machine, cost upward of euro2500!
i've seen this machine, and it's nothing special. but it has lots of dedicated equipment that could easily be replaced by generic computer equipment.
this also got me wondering about creating some sort of open DIY medical equipment repository.
seeing this article, i can well believe that a lot of people could benefit from such openly available research!
--- blackironprison, where ignorance is bliss....
It doesn't sound like he purchased finely machined parts constructed out of surgical steel and other surgery rated equipment.
With that in mind. I am unsure if I would want to be the first person this is used on and I definately wouldn't want to be the third, fourth fifth or last person this machine is used on...
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
"In total I had to buy only the scope, which is about $800," Dr Huy told the BBC World Service programme Go Digital.
You can seriously tell someone to stick Windows up their ass! And, those that do the work can take this job and shove it.
Just another day in Paradise
I'd put down my life savings right now that says US hospitals (even the poorest and most destitute) will continue to buy the $30,000 one.
That's what's wrong with the US healthcare system. "Why do something cheap when we can spend even more money for something just as useful?"
-Arthur
Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
I'm working in the medical device business, and a large part of our expenses is for stuff like clinical studies, documentation to comply with FDA regulations and such. Also, the relatively low numbers tend to make manufacturing more expensive than for mass-manufactured stuff.
Last but not least, the market seems to readily accept the high prices manufacturers are demanding. In fact, an ex-colleague told me a story about a surgical instrument that failed in the market because of a too low price. Doctors did not trust that "cheapshit" stuff. After a rebranding and raising of the price, the same instrument did fine in the market. Expect management to happily take advantage of such thinking.
Overall, I'm not surprised that a professional endoscope costs 30.000, even if something almost (I suspect Dr Nguyen Phuoc Huy made a few compromises in the used materials) equivalent can be built at 1000 in materials.
C - the footgun of programming languages
I kind of doubt a USA company has patents in Vietnam on camera's with lenses attached, and if they had, I *really* doubt they'd find a lawyer to agree with them.
How cheaply can it be done for?
It should be able to take images from a wide range of input (devices, resolutions, color corrections, user selectable, and NOT from a config list requiring rebooting, if you please,) feeding something like The Gimp for image manipulation, in real time.
Guy's in Vietnam and had no support issues with M$ We can do better for cheaper.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
They are socialists, they just buy one copy and share!
Get your Unix fortune now!
It sounds like he actually purchased the physical endoscope. That's the part that goes inside...you know what. Only the endoscope needs to be sterilized. Everything else is outside. (Don't put your laptop in an autoclave!)
The camera goes on the outside. In many places, there is now camera, and instead the doc looks into the other side...however, having a camera is easier on your back...plus it might help keep the lawyers off your back...
You see that the cost here is from the combination of proprietary hardware and software for the endoscope that ups the prices $29,000. I agree that using OSS for the OS and software might be a better solution, but that will probably take some interest from the WHO, a philanthropist like Mark Shuttleworth, or maybe a couple OSS coders with some interest in putting together some of the OSS software in a workable setup. You could probably fiddle with some of the available videoo software and make a live/install special Linux distro for the purpose.
I can see it on now: buttpilot.sourceforge.net
Building a healthy future; Connecting communities
I was the designer and developer of a major endoscopic image capture system here in Australia for a company who sold thousands of copies in the UK, US and parts of Asia. A lot of the difficult work at the time wasn't actually capturing the images and storing them, that was relatively easy, VfW did a lot of the work on most video capture boards, even though it didn't give you as much control over the video overlay as you really wanted. Some video cards provided MCI drivers which gave much more control, zoom, pan etc. Like the Matrox capture cards. All video endoscopic systems provided some sort of analog video output, composite, S-Video, RGB. The major systems were Olympus, Fujitsu and Pentax with a few minor players in specialty endoscopic fields.
The hard part was actually remotely triggering the capture on the PC. We initially tried to get the specialists to tell a PC operator to press a button, but they just got frustrated with the whole procedure.
Our next thing was to use the buttons on the scopes themselves (the flexible scopes have two dials for lateral movement and usually one or more buttons which can be assigned to various functions on each unit) so we slowly begged and borrowed one of each model of each type of scope unit so we could create interfaces to plug into them.
Myself and a colleage researched over 100 units, measured signals, found suppliers of connectors, found manufacturers who could copy proprietary connectors (and there were about 30 different types of custom connectors in the end) and then wrote the code.
We started using it for upper endoscopy and colonoscopies, but it was sold for ERCP's, MRI/PET/CAT scanning, rigid scope procedures and also for overhead cameras in surgery.
It's an interesting field, I personally sat in on over 200 procedures to test the software, colonoscopies being the worst. Not great a procedure. I'm glad they give people drugs to make them forget that 15 minutes...
Task Mangler
... and he can cure polyps and ulcers. Teach a man to build his own endoscope, and you can sell him the bits, let him cure polyps and ulcers, and sue him for IP infringement!
/. libertarians - right-wing and accelerating rapidy towards a sort of political event horizon as far the rest of the world is concerned - who get rabidly fanatical over Linux, as nice a piece of applied socialism as the world has ever seen...
But hey, what would I know. I still laugh at all the
Personally, I vote for hypocritical, with a good dash of arrogant ignorance thrown in.
What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?
After all it is a dirty hack
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
Boy, wouldn't Freud have a field day with you lot! I'm of the perception that the webcam stays 'high and dry' on top of the PC (or somewhere else close by) and doesn't go anywhere near your moth^H^H^H^Hbutt. Else why would he be tinkering with optics and buying an $800 probe?
I'm thinking the endo probe does the dirty work so to speak, and the system of optics that he's come up with makes the other end of the probe play nicely with a common-or-garden webcam.
Not withstanding that 'endoscopes' can be used on both 'ends', I wanna know why in the picture accompanying TFA, he appears to be shoving the endoscope down the back of the vict^H^H^H^Hpatient's kneck?!
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
A Dutch F16 technician ones showed me the boroscope they were using to check the insides of the engine. He told me that a couple of weeks before a surgeon of the local hospital had been cursing when he saw the scope. The surgeon had been requesting a boroscope for three years already and couldn't get the funds allocated and here the local AFB had a couple on hand.
Use Adsense for Charity
ingenuity and tech , respect to the man ..
...to Intel Inside.
Actually it could be useful in poor LIGHTED areas.
If dude, can wire up an endoscope from spare parts he can pirate windows.
of course it's easier to instal and use linux anyways.
Blame the extra cost on the FDA. Manufacturing medical equipement isn't a matter of putting white box parts in the shipping carton.
Both the design process and the manufacturing process must be highly documented and tracable for the equipement to be allowed for sales in the US. All this red tape takes time and that costs money.
We could be complaining about this, but when you consider that poorly performing medical equipement can harm or even kill the patient (and has in the past as in the well documented case of the XRay machine), it's a good thing that some process is in the loop to prevent dangerous, or even just plain risky equipement on the market.
That's all about public appearance. In the case of politicians and other public figures that crusade against those things it's a power play to certain small but influential groups.
There is only a small group of people that are actually horribly offended by such content, but there is a pervasive set of morals among all of us that supports the repressed view as the "ideal view" - so even the middle of the road people just duck and don't put up any resistance, because they don't want to look like "perverts" or "barbarians" in the eyes of their nieghbors - so the moralist crusaders are just left to frolick and cut the Janet Jackson's and Private Ryan's to pieces every now and again whenever they get really riled up.
Porn, on the other hand, is all behind closed doors - if people can't see you, then any type of debauchery is okay by us, but the second that anyone catches you doing something naughty they then feel obligated to decry your sinfullness to the rest of the community so they themselves do not appear complicit.
Using the government to do so isn't and that is a very big distinction that must be understood. Americans as a whole are some of the most generous people on the planet when you look at voluntary donations. Go look up the amount of wealth that flows out of the US. Americans have no qualms about giving money, they just don't want to be forced to do so.
Look at is this way, if your government gives money on your behalf how can you claim to be generous yourself when the decision wasn't your own? You can't. Oh I am sure some can but they could argue the sky isn't blue too.
Your claim that America as a society that holds on to religion yet seems to disagree with it is wrong in. Your applying the argument in a method which makes any dissent indefensible; strawman.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
If you equate Charity with Socialism, then I can understand how you are confused. Perhaps explaining the difference will clear things up for you.
Charity - voluntary giving
Socialism - compelled confiscation
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
"Using the Windows operating system, we have programs to record the images and put them in a database of patients."
Maybe Windows is not the best choice for medical devices? Gives Blue Screen of Death a literal definition.
Does anyone else get different images from the terms "Vietnam medic" and "Vietnamese doctor"? The latter is more accurate but the headline makes me think of an army medic in the Vietnam War jumping out of helicopters and shoving webcams up soldier's bums.
Never approach a vast undertaking with a half-vast plan.
if he'll use it and see that hot babe that's always at the business end of a webcam......
A nice, insightful parent post and you spin it back into a tedious little morality play. I knew it was too good to last.
Regarding porn, I remind you that there is more than one American and if one person loves Jesus while another stars in jizz flicks, this does not meet any definition of hypocrisy.
Saving Private Ryan was on TV, so it's difficult to sustain your argument that you can't show it on TV. Further, despite concerns from some stations, the FCC issued a preemptive ruling stating that there would be no fines for showing the movie uncut.
As for Janet Jackson, even the Ameriphobic Guardian cited a poll in which on 17% of Americans were "very concerned" about the Jackson incident -- the same percentage of people who voted for Le Pen in France. Neither is a sign of the impending apocalypse.
Kill, Tux, kill!
Total cost of extra hardware - less than $1000.
Webcam shots of my rectum... priceless.
I don't see what all the fuss is about? What can he do with this thousand dollar bit of kit that he can't do with a hollow bit of bamboo and a torch? Sheesh, some people always do it the hard way, don't they?!
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Regarding the point about porn and the set of Americans containing more than one person: Americans who live in the Bible Belt have a higher per capita consumption of porn. The dissonance isn't quite as high as in Russia where more people claim to be Orthodox Christians than believe in God, but there is something that doesn't sit quite right with the claims made by some and the facts on the ground.
Regarding Saving Private Ryan, it was on TV once. But this past year, when one of the networks wanted to rebroadcast it on memorial day, the FCC refused to say one way or the other if the stations would have been fined for broadcasting the F Bomb. Consequently, most stations refused to air it because they had already gotten threats of complaints to the FCC should Private Ryan air.
That 17% may not be a sign of an impending apocalypse, but it certainly does make life uncomfortable when they have a disproportionate amount of power in the white house and congress.
It really shows how overpriced the medical devices are in the rest of the world. But of course no one usually cares because your insurance pays for it.
But wait, $3000 for a 15 minute CAT Scan at the local clinic. Hummm...
... unless you don't know what an endoscope is.
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
Even though TFA is not specific, I suspect the guy used an industrial bore scope http://www.titantoolsupply.com/borescopes.html commonly used for inspecting the inner works of machinery, then paired it with a webcam. The camera itself never enters the body, just the small (.250-.500 inches) flexible bore scope.
I did something similar back in the late 80s to make an inexpensive optical targeting system for digitizing PCB hole patterns (reverse engineer kind of thing).
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
If this is a picture of the endoscope I'll thank you please to keep it the hell away from my body.
They told him what he could do with his Pentium 4, and he took them literally.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Americans and America are generally generous people.
I'm not so sure about that. Americans are generally misled about how generous America and Americans are.
Gross Aid suggests that America is 2nd in the ranks of charitable countries (though this is 1997, the spend on war in Iraq has put strains on spend in many areas).
Charitable Nations shows how generous america is "per person"
Johns: Well, how does it look now? Riddick: Looks clear.
Compared to not having an endoscope at all, this is terrific. But to pass as a "medical-grade" device in a developed country, there has to be a lot more to this apparatus and the cost will likely skyrocket.
May still be quite low, but nothing quite as spectacular as this.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
do this too. FTA "Using the Windows operating system, we have programs to record the images and put them in a database of patients."
Linux is missing out an the entire homemade medical equipment market because it doesn't have programs to record images and put them in a database!
*DrugCheese rants*
I've noticed a certain mentality in the US: It is everyone's right (or is that duty?) to sue the heck out of everyone else.
Perhaps these medical companies selling their expensive equipment are only compensating for the cost of equipment failure? An endoscope that loses an o-ring in a patient might cost the company half a million in "Digestive discomfort compensation"...
Just a thought...
...A new brance of amateur porn here.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
Some submitters have delusions of grandeur and try to write something around it (which generally tends to be inaccurate or blatantly wrong, or at least annoying), others just cut and paste a paragraph or so from the article.
If you don't like that, then why are you reading Slashdot in the first place?
Isn't it amazing what you can do when the FDA isn't driving up your costs?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
You spelled "You must be new here..." wrong.
Charitable Nations
The poster noted that Americans AND America are generous, however this is a widely held belief by Americans which does not fully hold up.
Not trying to offend people, but it can get a bit... trying to be told how generous America is (being Irish, we do quite well).
Johns: Well, how does it look now? Riddick: Looks clear.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Doctor: Well I have good news and bad news.
Patient: Give me the good news first!
Doctor: You don't have colon cancer.
Patient: Well thats good, whats the bad news?
Doctor: The webcam fell off.
Mental note: Don't get sick in Vietnam...
. On one hand the US is ultra-religious. But on the other hand helping the poor is totaly unamerican (socialism is baaaaaaaad).
Americans are the ultimate paradox. On the one hand they are ultra religious, but on the other hand, Americans hate helping the poor.
The vast majority of these instruments can be made (from high quality parts no less) for a small fraction of the cost. But then, of course, you have to... make them.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
How about replacing the webcam and Pentium with a cameraphone? Then the pics can be analyzed with clusters of computers on the Net, by experts anywhere in the world - at the lowest price.
--
make install -not war
The doctor plans to also assist other local hospitals that are facing similar budgetary contraints.
Anyone else read that as "facing similar buggery constraints?"
The savings is in the numbers.. how many patients can this be shoved up and how fast... next! a smaller webcam - although adding more $ can be shoved up quicker and faster... next!
I've heard of people putting iPods up their rectums but never Pentium 4 PCs! This is a whole new trend.
Best Buy can have you arrested
I know that the health care industry is generally focused on finding a profit somewhere, but I like this new spin on sharing amongst medical professionals. Sourceforge has a ton of medical software, but I'm not aware of many shared hardware/design communities out there in this field.
This story should be titled "Vietnemse Medic" ... not "Vietnam Medic" ... - the former is correct, the latter sounds (to my American ear) like a US Army Medic from the Vietnam war who did this...
Of course you can build this stuff for a fraction of what it costs from a company that makes it. Any company that makes medical equipment has to be ISO certified, inspected, have major forms of insurance to cover rampant medical litigation, etc.
He can MAKE an endoscope for $1000, but how much would have to SELL it for, after he had all the necessesary insurance, certifications, and other forms of CYA?
The Go Digital program that this appeared in is still available on the BBC's servers. The endoscope bit starts at 17 minutes into the stream.
Jeff
Often times it takes a bit of pressure, low funds, and ingenuity to be truly innovative.
Seriously if you are looking for a good project to work on it can't get much better than this, or something similar. If you can get a few people together - an expert each in hardware, analog/digital, software, and domain-specific industrial knowledge there are bound to be lots of ways you can change the world. The biggest problem with people who want to do good for the third world (as far as I have experienced and been told) is that you imagine everything can be fixed with the net, have no grip on higher priorities, etc. But this is a real case of something that is needed, and some experts could even make it a better project, saving the M$ tax being the least of it. How about figuring out a way to get a freescope to every hospital in Vietname or whatever country you pick (how about Cambodia?) Maybe someone reading this in Vietname would talk to the doctor about setting up a free endoscope construction online resource, starting with buying a scope and using windows with a faq but ultimately going full blown from scratch and with ways to hook in small/medium size manufacturers.
This person in Vietname wouldn't have to do the entire project himself (but must be responsible to getting things done, or else they won't), but can ask for help from people on slashdot and they'll tell their friends, and so on.
I've helped a friend who created the Sihanouk hospital in Cambodia and that individual is a very resourceful retired journalist able to pull in all kinds of favors. Definitely not common. But one interesting project was telemedicine, getting links in to check with foreign hospitals for diagnosis. I also met someone who was using a pda and cheap sensors for very inexpensive testing and telemetry (Grenoble Hospital I believe, in France). The best is if you get a doctor who is also a whiz at every other necessary skill and doesn't have a lot of patients to worry about.. but as you can see it took this man 2 years and it's in his spare time. That is fine. Now can anybody else help him or people like him, who understand exactly what the need is and just need help to get it IMPLEMENTED?
Run don't walk and find those key people. You can change the world.
The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience
Why don't Christians live what they preach?
Ronald J. Sider
Christianity Today, Jan/Feb 2005
Home made endoscope - $1000 Locally made PC - $250 Giving your patient aids because your endoscope can't go in the autoclave - Priceless This little pesky thing called safety is what makes medical devices so expensive. One good, FDA approved, commerically made autoclave compatable endoscope is a lot less expensive than a year of AIDS drugs for a single victim. - Adam
ROFLOL
Maybe only 17% of Americans were "very concerned" about the Jackson incident.
But the FCC received tens of millions of emails from a coordinated astroturf campaign by Focus on the Family and other affilliated conservative groups.
This astroturf campaign dominated the newsmedia, and influenced FCC policy.
That 17% is very organized, connected, vocal, and well-funded. For their impact on policy in the US, they are effectively a majority.
Personally, if my 5 year old saw Janet Jacksons' nipple during a pro football game, shame on me for letting my 5 year old watch grown testosterone addicts pound eachother senseless into the turf. Nipples? My kids' seen nipples. He was breast fed. But I'm just an immoral member of the 83% Liberal Minority in the US.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
When a Perkin-Elmer part is needed (say a 3vdc motor - less than a buck) their price is generally between 100x and 1000x generic price.
We all bitch about it but there isn't really any other option for the manufacturer. They sell a few thousand Gas Chromatographs a year, worldwide. There is no economy of scale. It's not like cellphones or harddrives or whatnot where there are factories spewing hundreds of millions a year.
We are using lab equipment from the 70s, 80s, and one or two things from the 90s. Nothing newer. I don't want the manufacturers to go out of business because nobody here knows how to keep everything running and there are parts difficult to source sucb as GC injectors etc.
We definitely aren't keeping them in business buying new equipment, so when they want $400 for a $2 bit of glass it almost seems fair.
It is very different from the consumer market.
Man, you really need that seminar!
This guy is a sick pervert. OMFG!
"Using the Windows operating system, we have programs to record the images and put them in a database of patients."
One has to wonder how much was paid for that plug.
DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!!
Of course, there is no reason to hold dumbness in a non-medical area against a doctor. But there are doctors who are dumb in non-medical areas just as there are Presid^H^H^H^H^H^H people who are dumb in business who have MBAs.
(I hit on the President as it seems conclusively proven that he was a failure at running companies. As was Truman, IIRC).
Well done that man. If only more people would find cheap alternatives to expensive 1st world solutions, the crappier parts of the world would be a lot less crappy.
Of course, even when they DO get something approved, let a single problem appear after the fact and suddenly it's a multi-million dollar lawsuit and "why didn't they make sure it was safe!"
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
I have a friend who neglected to take an antimalarial with water. The pill burned the shit out of his esophagus. He had an endoscopic exam, here's the mp4 he made of the DVD souvenir they gave him. The rest of the blog is very interesting. That same friend, and this other mutual friend, took a year off to visit every continent. Yes, that includes Antarctica. Take a look!
and rtfa; he *bought* the scope (real 'medical' stuff) and 'only' connected it to the webcam/computer; furthermore he *is* a doctor, you might assume he knows about AIDS (and all the other reasons) to 'clean' the equipment (properly).
It is highly likely that he can unplug the scope and put it in an autoclave; sure, this 'cheap' construction might backfire somewhere, but FDA approval would NOT prevent that (maybe lower the chance of it happening, but given the state of the US patent office I wouldn't give a damn about what the FDA says).
It's called having your cake and eating it too. Seriously. I am not joking about this.
It is my belief that this is BY DESIGN. From a selfish national standpoint, why commit to one side when you can talk about both and actually do neither of them.
Yes, we are religous. Yes, we want to help those less fortunate. No, we won't help Africa. Why? Don't know and don't care but we'll leave it to the rest of the world to wonder why while we move on to other things. (note: Africa only provided as an example because it is current. There are many many other examples of this behavior. Iraq war comes to mind)
It seems like its working pretty well thus far given the parent post.
Two questions:
1) Will it go into an autoclave for dissinfection the same way that a commercial scope does? It would be pretty nasty if other peoples poop builds up in the nooks and crannies of the device.
2) What happens when you see a pollup? Most commercial devices have cutting tools and coterizing devices attached to the scope. Its pretty worthless to see a tumor if you can't cut it out or at least biopsy is for the pathology lab. (yes, even third world countries have microscopes to identify pathalogical tumors)
In 1977 I worked briefly for a company (IIRC, initials are B and D) that built portable kidney dialysis machines. One of the components of the machine was a blood pump, which is nothing but a piece of 1/2 inch plastic tubing in a loop, and a set of three little rollers on a triangle that rotates inside the loop. The little rollers press against the tubing, squeezing the tube and gently pushing the blood through the tube - a very simple, elegant system.
This tube is disposable and only used once. This means that a patient who goes in for dialysis twice a week uses up two of them. (The tubing used to be autclaved and reused, but that went out before I worked there.) You can buy the Exact Same Tubing at the hardware store for about $1 per foot, at today's prices. The company sold a two-foot piece of tubing in a sterile pack for $500, back in 1977. It's probably over $1000 by now. And the hospitals _had_to_pay_it_ - by regulations, they were required to use only materials approved by the manufacturer of the device, or they could be sued and/or lose their accreditation. Of course, the manufacturer didn't approve any tubing except their own.
I'm sure that the medically approved tubing has to be produced in an FDA approved and inspected plant, to make sure that it's not sullied by foreign guck, but IIRC it was actually the same plant. The medical tubing is just handled slightly differently - I think it comes off the extruder still hot & sterile and is immediately cut and packaged into the sterile pack, where the regular stuff is just spooled.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
Looks like the reporter copied the whole paragraph straight from Wikipedia. See for yourself and compare the two. Funny how I don't see any credit being given to the paragraph's origins in there, is that not a violation of the document's license? As I read it, the BBC's excerpt is considered a Modified Version (link to Wikipedia license).
A quick google search turned up another site with nearly the exact same wording (Biodatabase.de), and you can see they have the credit for Wikipedia at the bottom. Why is the BBC any different?
checking for libvirus... no
ERROR, libvirus.so not found, terminating
They know *now*, doofus.
Cheap ass, equipment
or
Cheap, ass equipment.
I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
"...what MRI company do you work for again?"
"A major one."
--- What
Are they so poor that none of them can afford shoes?
3 people in this picture. The feet of 2 of the people are visible. Number of shoes in picture = 0
Homebuilt MRI anyone?
"Yes, Jayne, she's a witch. She's had congress with the beast..."
"She's in Congress?" - Firefly, "Objects in Space
(announcer) Where are you going, Timmy? You look excited!
(Timmy) Oh, I am, Mr. Announcer! They found a job for me and it's OVERSEAS!
(A) That must be really exciting, Timmy. What are they going to have you doing over there?
(T) I'm not sure, but it's in Viet Nam so I'm betting it's going to be really cool. Maybe even an online porno site!
(A) Wow, good for you, Timmy.
(2 WEEKS LATER)
Ring, ring
(A) Why, that must be Timmy! I wonder how he's doing?
(picks up phone)
(T) FOR THE LOVE OF GOD GET ME OUT OF HERE! THEY'RE SHOVING ME UP... SPLORTCH! SPLORTCH! -- BRRRT! BRRRT! BRRRT!
(A) My, my; it looks like Timmy has been disconnected. Oh, well, children. He'll call back later, I'm sure. He sounds like he's having a great time over there!
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
Over here, the first time one of this guy's patients had an upset tummy after the procedure, he'd be sued for everything he owns. Medical progress now depends on large corporations with good legal departments and expensive insurance-- but even the big boys are now in jeopardy from a legal system run amok.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
I have another suggestion. Society needs to recognize that ANY drug can kill you. Aspirin and Tylenol kill thousands of people every year. So do a lot of herbal remedies.
All drugs have side effects. The art of medicine is in balancing the risks and benefits to come to some kind of compromise that will benefit patient the most while doing the least possible harm.
Vioxx saved the lives of a lot of people with intractable pain, who would have otherwise taken too much Motrin or Tylenol and died of bleeding ulcers, or would have gotten hooked on opiates. Now it's gone.
The medical system is coming apart at the seams. I lay half or more of the blame on trial lawyers.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
This guy's accomplishment is a very small demonstration of what a full-fledged open-source ECONOMY might be able to do. Everything might in fact be much less costly.
Quoth me: "Open source: it's not just about software any more."
...when they're giving you a colonoscopy that they have to put a little sign on your butt that says, "Intel Inside" ?
Who cares about the ozone layer?...thanks to CFC's I can write my name......IN CHEESE!!!
I'm a radiologist, and I'm calling bullshit on you.
I suspect you work for GE Healthcare. There are only two "American MR manufacturers" left, as far as I know, and that's GE and Fonar. All the rest are made by the Japanese (Toshiba, Hitachi) or Europeans (Siemens, Philips.)
I think GE is at least twenty times as big as Fonar, and I'm not even sure Fonar's smaller specialty machines cost the "million dollars" you assert in the first place, so you must be a GE man. GE's general purpose magnets certainly do cost a million or more, and they are definitely worth it.
GE and Fonar make excellent equipment, and their MR images are outstanding. They can compete with any of the other makers. Most of our scanners are GE.
Your assertion about poor quality components makes no financial sense for GE or any other manufacturer, because almost everybody who buys an MR also gets a service contract to replace broken or faulty components. This is a major profit center for the company.
If makers were putting faulty equipment into their machines, we would be seeing the effects in poor image quality. These are some of the most sensitive and carefully calibrated electronic instruments ever made.
If I see image artifacts leading to poor quality scans, it means I am on the phone to my GE field service engineer in about fifteen seconds, and he better get his ass out to my office like NOW and fix whatever is wrong, because I'm not scanning patients until it's fixed.
Repeated service contract calls for shitty components means the maker loses big bucks. Labor is a lot more expensive than materials, as your own figures show. A company that did business as you assert would soon be at a competitive disadvantage.
Two other points:
1) If what you say is correct, you could file a qui tam lawsuit and win tens of milions of dollars. Defrauding Medicare or the FDA is a serious crime and those who blow the whistle on it earn big rewards. Huge rewards. So put up or shut up.
Everybody else, wait for news of his lawsuit any day now. If it doesn't come, you can safely assume that this guy is a poorly informed factory-floor peon, just a disgruntled big-mouth, talking out his ass. Not only that, but if what he says is true, he's as greedy as the corporate honchos he condemns, sweeping it under the rug so his job's not threatened. He's either a liar, or a greedy coward, or maybe both, that's all there is to it. I've got a mind to let my pal at GE, Jim Rapp, know what kind of dirtbag they have in their QC group.
2) Your assessment of the cost structure and profit margin of the MR's your company sells is faulty. I don't see you taking R & D, software, computer workstations, or FDA certification expenses into account, never mind sales or marketing or shipping costs.
I'm sure there is a fat profit margin on MR scanners, but it's more like 30 or 40 percent than the 300 percent you are implying.
These million-dollar machines scan fifteen or twenty sick patients a day, for eight to twelve years of useful life. They each save tens of millions of health care dollars during this time, speeding diagnoses, shortening hospital stays, and preventing unnecessary or futile surgery.
It is to every patient's advantage to make sure there are many strong device makers, competing vigorously, and investing big money in research and development.
Three cheers for capitalism and greedy corporations. They may save your ungrateful life someday.