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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.
Not really. Many patients have individual problems, like ulcers, sores or burns in particular places. Existing dressings and padding don't always fit perfectly or comfortably, especially around high pressure areas like the feet - the dressing must take the weight off the wound, but yet redistribute the weight so that it doesn't cut off circulation by pressing in elsewhere. So it takes a lot of trial and error to get the bandages wrapped comfortably.
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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.
Lawyers would have a field day with this.
I know that this is /. but if you read TFA you'd see that this is already covered.
I asked Young about the ramifications of making what amounts to medical devices. She replied, “Hospitals already have the processes in place to do investigational studies, and these are treated just like those studies.”
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