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Nurses Use Makerspace To Invent Custom Health Care Solutions (hackaday.com)
New submitter wd5gnr writes: University of Texas Medical Branch and an MIT initiative have joined forces to create the first maker space in a hospital. Often nurses see things that would make their jobs easier or a patient's care better and now they can create custom solutions to those problems. They aim to spread this to other hospitals and form a community of medical makers.
that's the delivery room.
Lawyers would have a field day with this.
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You really think it's a good idea to use your amateur radio call sign as your Slashdot user name?
-> I dislike sigs...
Maybe they can 3d print some drones too. Obviously MIT has more money than they know what to do with.
Nothing must be allowed that isn't under strict government control.
when Nurse Betty, who has no design or engineering background, emails a widget to Bridget, who gets sued when the SLA widget shatters in someone's face.
Yes I think the medical device market is retarded in their regulations ... but they were originally put there for a reason
It's hospital. I'd like to think that some testing, training and thought goes into new processing and equipment. Some of that... oh what's it called... Scientific method?
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Yes I think the medical device market is retarded in their regulations ... but they were originally put there for a reason
The problem with this position is that it's not very efficient.
The regulations have grown to mean "safety at any cost", which means that in many cases effective care has become a lower priority than perfect safety.
Many examples abound. I chatted with a researcher at Berman Gund who said that he had a cure for a specific genetic disease that affects about 250 people in America (and proportionally the rest of the world). He said that many researchers have promising treatments for these less common ailments, but that it's impossible to navigate the FDA regulations due to cost.
It takes $2.5 billion to bring a drug to market, and no company would pay that expense to cure 250 people.
I remember reading an announcement for a migraine cure using magnetic fields (TMS). It was a sort of curved wand, like the end of a hockey stick. You place the bent end against the back of your head and press a button to give a burst of magnetic field and your migraine stops. The researchers stated that they were throwing the research to the public because they couldn't afford to bring the device to market due to FDA regulations.
I also remember during the height of the AIDS thing where people who had a demonstrably fatal disease couldn't choose alternative therapies which had yet to be deemed "safe".
You can't get out of the system, even with informed consent.
So the result is that very few people get harmed by medical devices (and procedures), but a very large proportion of sick people get harmed by not having access to slightly less safe devices.
We've missed having a balance, and as a result medical technology has pretty-much stagnated.
The medical profession has been doing this for years. Physicians, surgeons, nurses and physical therapists have been making their own tools and gear to help their patients since at least the early '80s. I worked with an orthopedic surgeon, her nurse and a physical therapist back then who were creating stuff in a workshop, with lathes, hammers, molds, cork, leather, plaster, plastic and steel. They made orthotics, braces, instruments, even silastic implants. Stuff patients could take home and use to make their lives easier.
Rehabilitation medicine has been a "maker space" before makers were cool. Or thought they were cool.
You are welcome on my lawn.
We really don't need makerspaces, hackathons, and venture capitalists buzzing through hospitals.
I like how the comments on this article are about, "Oh, no, this shit can't happen, because there will be too many problems."
I'd like to see you say that when you're on a gurney bleeding your guts out and some "nurse" has to fashion a quick invention to save your shitty attitude of a life. Just so you can sue her.
Doctors and nurses, for centuries, have been doing just this sort of thing: finding A way, ANY WAY, to save a life. Ncessity, the true mother of invention, and in a hyper critical time of do or die. Usually gives us the best inventions.
I'm all for it. I'd rather a guy spend his life WITHOUT a leg, than to just fucking die. Human life is more important than some douchebag who thinks everyone has to be safe from people with --- experience? Yeah, experience. Most nurses have that.
Shit happens, I understand that. But it's the 1% rule. 1% of the time, it happens. The other 99%, it doesn't. You only hear about the 1% of the time shit goes wrong.
That anyone in Texas is smart enough to invent anything but hatred and inbreeding.
Physicians may dictate the parameters and protocols, but it is nurses who care for you minute by minute.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Thought it said "Nurses" and "Make-out Spaces" I've been watching too much por...um, poorly plotted low budget movies.
Pretending this is my office full of bitter coworkers..
If nurses are over 90% female, are these only going to be used by the less than 10% of male nurses, since women have no interest in technology?