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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.
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...
That's the part I've never understanded about the US. On one hand the US is ultra-religious. But on the other hand helping the poor is totaly unamerican (socialism is baaaaaaaad). Now what I don't get is this: is the US hypocritical (a lot of talking, but noone really meaning what they say) or is this a case of a splitten personality? (radical differences in oppinion)
This isn't meant as flamebait or anti-americanism or something. It's just strange that a society that holds on to religion in so many ways, seems to disagree with a major portion of it.
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.
I work for an American MRI manufacturer, testing magnets that are sold to hospitals for around $1,000,000 a pop.
The magnets are labelled "Made in USA" but are in fact only assembled here, using components from China, Mexico, and Burma... very very cheap components. All told, it costs the company less than $10,000 in materials, and around $200,000 in labor and energy to assemble and test each magnet, including liquid helium costs. The FDA would kick up a shitstorm if they knew what we were putting in these supposedly "top quality" devices. But so far, we've only sent in special runs of our systems using premium components for their evaluation.
Of course, these magnets are barely passing their tests. Some aren't, but we are expected to pass them regardless so our revenue stream keeps flowing in the right direction.
It should be obvious why I'm posting as an Anonymous Coward. Now you hopefully have an even clearer picture of what the healthcare business is all about. (Hint: It rhymes with funny, but isn't.)
I've got some friends in the medical industry, and it's seriously bloated financially - this is probably the same hardware that costs $100,000, but without the label on it. One company I know of who builds X-Ray machines charges $500 for a "specially formatted" floppy disk to be used with their equipment. A floppy disk!! You can make your own by simply using 'dd', but doctors are too dumb to know this. It's not just the patients who get screwed, paying $8 for an asprin - it's the entire industry. This is cool, one definite way to say "shove it up uranus", and have almost identical equipment as you would have paid otherwise.
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.
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