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Cheap, Portable Ultrasound Could a Be Lifesaver .
ericjones12398 writes "Every year, around 250,000 women die due to complications from pregnancy and childbirth. New research developing cheap, portable ultrasounds could help reduce that number. From the article: 'Although diagnostic imaging is scarce in much of the developing world (mostly related to cost and portability), ultrasound imaging is a feasible technology for prototyping in low-resource settings such as developing countries. Indeed, many notable technology giants, such as GE and Siemens, are working on low-cost portable ultrasound models. GE’s Vscan is a handheld, pocket-sized visualization tool that allows for non-invasive ultrasounds. Mobisante, a startup in Seattle, takes portable ultrasound technology one step further with the MobiUS SP1 system, an ultrasound that wirelessly connects to the Internet or a smartphone for viewing results at an affordable price tag. By comparison, the large, clunky ultrasound machine most people associate with hospitals can cost anywhere from $32,000-$160,000.'"
So you know when it's the time to run away.
Ba-dum-ttsshhh
an ultrasound that wirelessly connects to the Internet or a smartphone for viewing results at an affordable price tag. By comparison, the large, clunky ultrasound machine most people associate with hospitals can cost anywhere from $32,000-$160,000.'"
So compare ??? to $32,000-$160,000
It could also increase the number of gender-specific abortions.
Education so they don't get knocked up in the first place. I'm not sure how you address famine by increasing the rates of overpopulation.
who knows what else will happen from making this cheap and portable?
Sadly because it will be called a "medical device" real innovation with them will be limited since they will be hard to get ahold of cheaply to play with (its a medical device afterall)
However.... I have to wonder how many random uses an ultrasound imaging device would have, if you took off the "medical device" label and let people have at it.
Even in medical fields, I have had an ultrasound, turns out you can use one to look through the liver at the heart. There is no reason to expect these will only help pregnant women, or be limited to old uses that had cost and availability of equipment factored into justification as to whether to use them.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Cost is not the only issue. Ultrasound equipment is severely regulated in some countries because it is used for gender identification that results in selective abortions. When my wife was pregnant in Shanghai, we had to go to a special hospital for foreigners to get an ultrasound.
Instead of facilitating the addition of millions of babies into poverty, perhaps a much greater emphasis should be placed on preventing their conception.
"GE’s Vscan is a handheld, pocket-sized visualization tool that allows for non-invasive ultrasounds."
I can only imagine the military-grade ultrasound cannon required for an invasive ultrasound exam.
none
I used to work for an ophthalamic ultrasound company. The hardware itself doesn't need to be expensive if you want basic functionality; it can be done in a USB-attachable box and run on any Windows machine. What makes devices like this expensive is the FDA (and it's equivalent agencies in non-U.S. countries) and all the extensive testing that needs to be done before they'll approve the device for sale. For ophthalamic ultrasound, I believe it cost something on the order of $50000US to perform all the testing that the FDA required before it could be legally sold. Other countries would require their own testing. All of this ends up driving the cost up. Of course the mere fact that it's a medical device means that the manufacturers jack the price up to make a gigantic profit off it, because doctors don't have much choice of where to buy their equipment, too.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Sounds like half a plan.
I'm not sure how you address famine by increasing the rates of overpopulation.
The same way you eliminate bugs by not writing software in the first place.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
With all the advancement in the medical industry, I honestly find it somewhat surprising this has taken so long to come about. There are a lot more implications than just pregnancy observation this device could work for. These could be issued to Military Medics and First Responders for more accurate treatment and diagnosis on the spot. They could also be used in other emergency situations to address concerns from injury prior to opening the person up. Specifically, car accidents and from the military standpoint gunshots and concussive force damage (IED blasts do more than visible damage with the shock impact on the body). Ultrasounds technology has a lot more uses than that.. Google for more examples if you need more convincing lol.
The prices on current commercial ultrasounds vary so wildly in the article due to the varied models and types available. The cheaper ones are probably entry level models for clinics, etc. The more expensive models can utilize both invasive and non-invasive examinations and would include the ‘4D’ ultrasounds as well.
Hopefully the low cost will also lower the cost to the consumer/patient in that more ultrasounds can be counted on insurance and at a lower overall cost. I know several people who could only get 5 ultrasounds covered before it came out of pocket. Out of pocket, ultrasounds add up quickly to be very expensive. For high risk pregnancies they are an absolute must as well.
While I disagree personally with not chooicing to have a baby due it "likely" gender. As a historian I feel that long term it could work out. If the population becoming to ratio one way then the value of the smaller group tends to increase. This can be seen in tradions of a "bride price" ie the man has to pay the bride's family. Having a shortage of woman could also force there to be a drop in the population. As an added bouns drop number of woman below that of men tends to cause wars which also tend to kill lots of the poplulation. It's not a nice way to get the population down but it does give all though men not getting any something to died for.
Life is like untied shoe laces; it always tripping you up and getting in your way.
I think I'd be able to find several kinky uses for transvaginal ultrasounds.
Our first child was in a hospital. It was the worst delivery she ever had--misplaced spinal line, back spasms, nearly 20 hours in labor, and finally a c-section that left her drugged up and unable to properly care for the newborn.
After that, we said "fuck the hospital" and did everything at home. By ourselves.
The one thing we can't do at home--due to idiotic laws--is get an ultrasound.
We've always wanted to get one a week before her due date to see if there will be any complications and to see if the baby is in position. But our state says a doctor is the only person qualified to use an ultrasound. Ok. So send me to a doctor. Nope. Not unless your 'baby doctor' refers you. Well--we don't have one. (With our second baby, we said we were doing it at home and the 'baby doctor' threatened to have us arrested for child endangerment for not using a hospital.) So no way in hell can we get an ultrasound.
Cost of first child (hospital birth): $32,000
Cost of three additional children (all born at home): $125 in bulb syringes, blankets, a scale, a 'homebirth certificate' with footprints, etc...
"Tricorder Please"
Red Shirt passes tricorder...
"No!!!.. A Medical Tricorder you dolt!!!"
Why do humans focus on saving lives instead of preventing the creation of lives that need saving? We have enough people on the planet. There's no shortage of humans. Why are we expending so many resources towards preserving their numbers?
It requires a trained technician to interpret those much-fuzzier-than-current-technology images. Training and retention of said technician will be 8x-400x the cost of the unit, plus implementation. There's the electricity infrastructure problem, too. (You know, for turning it on, keeping it charged, etc.) Oh, and what about the medical infrastructure to support treating whatever is found by the ultrasound? Sorry that you have a placenta previa, there's nothing we can do about it here or within 100 miles, or that you can afford to pay for.
This thing (and similar units) is basically a twin-fetus detector, and an extremely expensive one at that.
It sucks people die but 250,000/year.... Here is some numbers
3 Births Every Second
180 Births Every Minute
10,800 Births Every Hour
259,000 Births Every Day
Give it two days and all those babies and all those mothers are replaced by the numbers (not callously).
And that's the "buy now" price for the "Interson SeeMore USB Portable Ultrasound Abdominal Probe".
On the other hand...
As someone who had 3 different ultrasound diagnoses, to the same heart condition, by 2 specialists - which in the end turned out to be of viral origin (they were literally chasing shadows); and who later had a dubious privilege of fixing and editing hundreds of ultrasound photos for an ultrasound textbook, with each step done according to the instructions of an instructor/teacher with some 40 years in the ultrasound diagnostic - price of the equipment is not the biggest obstacle in getting the ultrasound "to the masses".
It's training and experience.
And you need literally years of both to start making your ultrasound guesses educated.
Cause without both extensive training with an experienced ultrasound technician AND years of experience in doing ultrasounds of that particular section of human body - that whole "subjective interpretation of an objective method" thing amounts to just guessing.
There's an episode of House where this is nicely demonstrated by House and Wilson trying to figure out if Cuddy's daughter has swallowed a coin.
On ultrasound it might be a dime, or it may just be an air bubble.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
In America, the cows get ultrasounds. What a country!
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
It will be interesting to see how this factors into the gender selection battles in China. It is currently illegal in China to perform an ultrasound or a sonogram for purposes of telling the parents the gender of the child. There are clandestine ultrasound techs who drive around with the machines in their trunk and flee when the cops catch wind of what is going on. This could turn all of that on its head.
Madre de Dios! Es El Pollo Diablo! -- Captain Blondebeard
During the recent healthcare debates in the USA I was stunned to read how many American women deliver babies with zero prenatal care - They present at emergency in labour and it's the first time they see a doc. Blew my mind that that sort of thing could go on in 'the greatest nation on earth.' Sounded more like The Sudan to me.
At the high end, there's 3D real time ultrasound. This builds up a 3D image from multiple scans from different directions. The ultrasound part of this is no more complex than the basic machines. The 3D part is knowing where the sensor is and software to build up a 3D image. 3D images are much easier to interpret than simple reflection images, and you can rotate them and look from another angle.
So what's needed is a handheld device with a position tracking system. You could probably kludge something together with a 6DOF INS (an accelerometer and rate gyro chip) and a mouse sensor to track movement along the body. The rest is software.
In third world countries, where they need the boys to work the fields, they would abort a girl at the first chance. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9103831/In-the-third-world-unwanted-baby-girls-disappear.-Its-called-gendercide.-And-its-happening-in-this-country-too.html
I hope that someday we will be able to put away our fears and prejudices and just laugh at people. - Jack Handey
Thanks to this technology and a good gynecologist my wife and I were informed that our little daughter have spina biffida, this helped the doctors to program a C Section to my wife and decide the best action to follow. Right now my baby is 19 month old and doing great!
Thank you technology and thank you science and medical advances!!
Slashdot ya no es que lo era!
The thing lacking in both the original article and the comments here (except for a few) is that ultrasonographic imaging has many diagnostic applications outside of neonatal care. Cardiopulmonary medicine, nephrology, hepatology, endocrinology, gastroenterology... the list goes on. All of these applications would make low cost, portable ultrasonography extremely beneficial in third world and developing countries.
The really big deal is the one from the Newcastle team that they estimate will cost $65. That's orders of magnitude less than the other "low-cost" devices around.
Even with degraded accuracy, having _some_ imaging capability is almost certainly better than having none.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Veterinary-WristScan-handheld-ultrasound-scanner-machine-VET-V9-A-/270891451870?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3f126385de
AdFuel
Make ANY medical technology cheap and portable and it'll save lives.
Can you sonic me, hunny?
My gf had a baby last year so I actually went looking for this to see if you could buy them cheap from Hong Kong. As it turns out, you can in fact buy the USB gadget with the actual hardware, the problem is that you also need some software to do the imaging, and they generally sell that with a netbook in one ugly looking package. The cheapest online quote I found was something north of 8000-10000 USD.
But you can buy it. So I don't think the hardware is actually the problem. It's just a question of the current customer base being doctors with lots of money to burn. I'm sure that if these were marketed with micro USB and an iPhone/Android app to pregnant consumers, the prices would be in the range 100-500 USD. Assuming ultrasound is not harmful if overdone, I actually think this could be good business. Prospective parents spend a lot of money on baby-related stuff.
Even with degraded accuracy, having _some_ imaging capability is almost certainly better than having none.
Having "some" ultrasound diagnostic capability of questionably quality is WORSE than having none.
First, you have to realize that the problem with ultrasound diagnostic is not in the lack of equipment.
Its in the lack of experts. And you really need EXPERTS, not technicians. Why?
Well, its the second thing - without years of expertise it is just a guessing game.
And experts become experts after years of training and experience of ultrasound imaging and diagnostic - on a very specific part of the body.
It's one of those "more art than science" things.
They are looking at shadows and reflections from inside of a living, moving 3D object - trying to make out a detail which would indicate some possible medical condition for that particular region of the human body.
Give a low capability device to someone with an "ultrasound course" and all you'll get is more faulty diagnoses, more "inconclusive" results and more work for the ultrasound specialists due to such ultrasounds.
You might as well equip each doctor with a portable machine that goes "PING!".
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I have worked in this exact field for 12+ years (see www.ultrasonix.com) - started as a software developer, and now involved with internal/external research and product development for the past 5 years. What the article fails to mention is that, sure there are a lot of low cost options in the market, there always have been and always will be - but their diagnostic capabilities are so inferior, that to try and address problems like pregnancy complications may be pointless. Obstetrical ultrasound is one of the most in-depth examinations that sonography can provide, and I doubt that with current technology the article is referencing (@ $100) that anything diagnostic can be achieved to help save the lives. I.e. why waste money and training time on an inferior technology, when perfectly capable ones already exist for a relatively low price already when pegged against other imaging modalities such as CT/MR/PET, etc. To give an idea, a $10,000 system is a low-cost ultrasound device these days (article references GE's V-Scan and Siemens P10 that fall under this category). These devices can definitely help see the fetus and help with very specific diagnoses, but if I knew my wife was at risk of complications, I would be appalled if she were scanned with a device like this when getting screened, so I just can't imagine that $100 technology will provide anything useful, even in 3rd world. I do believe that we'll have a ~$1000 scanner on the market, that's smart-phone sized and will provide wonderful diagnostic images, but probably not for another 10 years or so. And even in this case, it would be limited to specific exams. It would be interesting if the Newcastle group disclosed more information on their proposed technology in any case - always looking forward to the future of looking inside our bodies!
1. Invent one of those ultrasound transponder chip thingies
2. Bake it into the iPhone 6
3. ??????
4. Profit!!!!!!!!!!
As a sonographer of "medium seasoning", say 4-5 years of experience, you get it.
No matter how cheap you make the tech, if you can't drive it it's not going to get you where you want to go. It may lead you well off in the wrong direction.
Most doctors I work with (aside from radiologists of course) won't come near an ultrasound image to interpret it, nor will they touch the machine. Being able to perform a worthwhile sonogram typically requires 2 years of full time schooling, 75% of the time spend hands on scanning patients. Tack on another couple of years of practice, as mentioned above on a specific body part or area of focus, to have any real proficiency.
Sorry you had to edit all those images, they seem to choose the oldest, crappiest possible for textbooks, and for the boards.
I work an emergency department with an emergency physician who uses a "large, clunky US machine" to evaluate for countless disease processes quickly in pt's rooms. He and many other progressively minded physicians would jump at advances in this technology that would make it easier to use them to use.
"With patience a ruler may be persuaded, and a soft tongue will break a bone."
According to the Vscan Technical Manual, images are JPEG, movies are MPEG-4, and audio annotations are WAV, and I didn't find any references to a capability for DICOM support. Granted, these formats are probably the most convenient for and will probably serve the immediate needs of their likely target audience, but it would also be an obstacle to getting these files into an EHR. In addition, you (at least appear to) lose the benefits of embedded demographic and other metadata. Perhaps their intent is to follow-up at some point with DICOM support (probably in their Gateway software).
These guys have been around for quite a while:
http://www.telemed.lt/main_en.htm
Strange to hear the current ultrasound machines being described as 'clunky' - the one at my (NHS) hospital where my wife got her scans was pretty awesome. The level of ergonomic & functional design that went into it was fantastic, and the operator knew exactly what she was doing. The machine had clearly been designed in collaboration with the end user, as it had e.g. cubby holes for gel bottles and all smooth easy-to-clean surfaces. The nurse had one hand on the scanner, and the other on a trackball with which she was marking up the images as she took them - the images zipped to the side of the screen in a nice thumbnail list as she took them, and everything worked really well.
Considering how often bespoke technology workplace seems to be poorly thought out or just generic stuff pressed into service, I was very impressed.
Do a google search for Ultrasound Male Contraceptive.
Apply to important regions, like a massage, and after a few massages, condoms are only to prevent disease.