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Wii Balance Board Gives $18,000 Medical Device a Run For Its Money
Gizmodo highlights a very cool repurposing effort for the Wii's Balance Board accessory. Rather than the specialized force platforms used to quantify patients' ability to balance after a trauma like stroke, doctors at the University of Melbourne thought that a Balance Board might serve as well. Says the article: "When doctors disassembled the board, they found the accelerometers and strain gauges to be of 'excellent' quality. 'I was shocked given the price: it was an extremely impressive strain gauge set-up.'" Games controllers you'd expect to be durable and at least fairly accurate; what's surprising is just how much comparable, purpose-built devices cost. In this case, the Balance Board (just under $100) was compared favorably with a test platform that costs just a shade less than $18,000.
exactly. the FDA requires significant documentation of the hardware and software along all lines of the R&D, and manufacturing process. which are actively audited by the FDA. documentation, and documentation compliance is a huge chunk (not the largest, but definitely a line item on their accounting paperwork) of their budget.
moox. for a new generation.
As a guy who designs electronics for load transducers for living, I can tell ya that a balance board equivalent platform won't run you anywhere near $18,000. Probably more like $4k. One thing that makes the Wii device cheap is the mass production. Try selling a 100 of those a year for $100 apiece -- it's impossible. The tooling for plastic injection molding will cost you more than $18k alone. As for electronics themselves, they are not really a factor in the supposed $18k, er, $4k, price. I admit I haven't checked how accurate the balance board is. All I know is that $4k buys you a platform that has ~0.5mm accuracy for center of pressure across its surface of roughly 1/4 m^2. The resolution is better than that, of course.
OTOH, I'm going out and buying the darn balance board right about now :)
"When doctors disassembled the board, they found the accelerometers..."
They did? I couldn't find any information stating that the balance board had motion sensing. Everything I've read says it just has four pressure sensors, one for each corner and that's it.
I call BS. I have been involved in medical device development and licensing for some time. I can ballpark what the liability for a device such as this would be, and it is pretty small. The reality of the medical device industry is that it is a bubble that is largely propped up by low expectations, high regulatory barrier to entry, and other inherent consequences of our current medical device market system.
Take, for example, a glucose monitor (specifically, the most widely used system on the market in the US). The consequences of a technical failure are relatively high, including severe injury to the user. However, the insurance coverage for this type of device is barely 5% of the total retail cost of the sensor unit, and just over 8% of the retail cost of the disposable strips. The majority of the cost is from development overhead and ongoing quality assurance. The margins are still huge- fine. Here is the problem: independent testing results bear little in common with the reports filed with the FDA regarding accuracy and precision of the units. In fact, using their own test strips with calibrated samples of human plasma, the units only had a 60% confidence interval of indicating blood sugar to within within 15 points and the precision was not believable to within 20 points. Subsequent anecdotal testing by coworkers was consistent with our lab results (we were making an Iphone wart to to perform glucose management well before it seemed everyone wanted to do the same thing). One person saw blood sugar go from 70 to 110 to 87 within 10 minutes just because he tested with three different monitors with the same lot of strips. Our monitor was within a few points over 95% of the time, with about 3-point tall error bars.
The rub in this is that our device was going to sell for $12 versus $75, give superior results, and link to a wealth of online management tools. We couldn't do it because of the regulatory barriers, and even more because insurance companies would be slow to adopt a new device.
There are other examples in every doctor office. Hand/eye coordination test software that has less sophistication than PONG, or the first interactive app your kids ever wrote, yet the software costs $4200 plus annual licensing fees and docs bill it at $220 per use. This one is a doozy because I know the guy who wrote it and HE fully acknowledges this from the left seat of his sports car and life that has no other discernible source of income.
While I cannot offer a solution (that would be palatable to the majority of Americans with a shriveled connection to the inner and outer workings of their own lives), this example is not a new thing, but is is an example of something I have a great deal more respect for: innovation linked to something we quaintly used to call value.
As for the actual application, I cannot fathom that the same functionality could not be achieved for far less.
Nice post with a nice result, although you used some mystery maths to get there.
Sales proceeds need to be: $93.5 million. That means, the price for each unit needs to be: $93.50 per unit. What if they want a healthier profit margin? Their sole purpose in life is to manufacture medical devices, they don't sell software -- they need a good profit margin from selling their product. A fair profit margin is 100% or more. To achieve that, the minimum price is $930.50 per unit.
First you say 85 bucks is their break-even point, which means they have to sell it at 93.50 for a 10% profit margin (1.1 times 85). Then you somehow (almost) multiplied by 10 to get 930.50 bucks?
If 85 bucks is break-even, then they'll have a 100% profit margin selling at twice that, or 170 bucks. Not 930.50.
Also, 1 million sales is unrealistic for a niche product, it will probably be more like 200,000 sales. To maintain a healthy product with 1/20 of 1 million, the actual price needed will be 20x that, or $18,610.00
200,000 is 1/5 of 1 million. So following your line of thought, the actual price would be 5 times 170, or 850 bucks.
You did, however, say they produced 1 million of them, costing them 75 million in parts and labor. If they're only making 200,000 those costs would only be 15 million. Adding 10 million research costs to that makes a total of 25 million in production costs. To get that 100% profit margin, they'd need to earn 50 million in sales, meaning 50 million bucks/ 200,000 units = 250 bucks per unit.
Holy smokes, that's nowhere near the "$18,000 medical device" price.
I'd rather you rationally disagree than irrationally agree.
You have obviously never worked in an industry with high quality control standards.
I worked at a nuclear power plant that happened to be on a Navy ship. One of our supply guys had to order some simple part (a resistor or something) that was categorized as part of the nuclear plant, and it was maybe $100 through the supply system. He took the part number home, called the supplier from his home phone presenting himself as a hobbyist. It was about $1 for the same part. I guess we were paying $99 for the QC sticker they put on it before they sent it off through the supply system.
Disclaimer (because /. has taught me I need one): I'm not saying all QCed stuff is expensive for no reason. Just that sometimes people really are getting ripped off in the name of QC.
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Yeah they may give you great response time, but they totally bone you on the parts! A buddy of mine works IT for a hospital. One of their imaging machines had a HDD die, so he looks and it is a standard IDE HDD. He calls the company to see if he can just change it out, as they need that machine ASAP. "No, it'll void your warranty if you touch it! We'll send someone right over!"
Well apparently "right over = next day" and when the guy shows up he just pulls out a bog standard WD retail box and slips it in. Cost to the hospital (and of course I mean passed on tou you?)? $6000! That is right, they charged 6k for an $80 WD HDD. So if you want to know why your medical bill is so high? Well there is part of it right there. And according to him 2000%+ markups really ain't uncommon with the bunches making medical equipment. damn I wish I could get away with 2000% markup!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.