Why Sleep Apnea Patients Rely On a Lone, DRM-Breaking CPAP Machine Hacker (vice.com)

Jason Koebler writes: "SleepyHead" is a free, open-source, and definitely not FDA-approved piece of software for sleep apnea patients that is the product of thousands of hours of hacking and development by a lone Australian developer named Mark Watkins, who has helped thousands of sleep apnea patients take back control of their treatment from overburdened and underinvested doctors. The software gives patients access to the sleep data that is already being generated by their CPAP machines but generally remains inaccessible, hidden by DRM and proprietary data formats that can only be read by authorized users (doctors) on proprietary pieces of software that patients often can't buy or download. SleepyHead and community-run forums like CPAPtalk.com and ApneaBoard.com have allowed patients to circumvent medical device manufacturers, who would prefer that the software not exist at all. Medical device manufacturers fought in 2015 to prevent an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to legalize hacking by patients who wanted to access their own data, but an exemption was granted, legalizing SleepyHead and software like it.

Comments

Re:Sleep apnea? Lose some weight

[Rockoon]

most likely a deviated septum, which affects ~80% of the population

If it effected 80% of the population, it would be a normal septum and the people without issues would have the deviated septum.

This seems like a gross hyper-diagnosis similar to how everyone is diagnosed with attention deficit disorder now.

1) Relax the standard until everyone has it.
2) Sell treatments to all 8 billion people.