There's this whole biohacking/open source insulin pump community out there which is deeply terrifying. Medical devices go through the regulation they do for a reason, and it's scary that people are resorting to these ticking time bombs of hacked together devices because costs are so out of control.
Your comment doesn't have anything to do with the article, but even so -- insulin costs are not the reason people are doing the open source insulin pump modifications. They're doing them because it allows them much better fine grained control over their insulin levels, in essence giving them an artificial pancreas. This gives them much greater quality of life than having to continually use test strips and injections.
Yes, we have medical regulation, and it costs possibly hundreds of millions of dollars to bring new devices to market. They got tired of waiting.
I do agree that reducing costs of bringing new medical devices to market would be helpful. The only way to do that, however, is to reduce the regulatory framework a company has to comply with.
5 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 27.9 ms ] threadYes, we have medical regulation, and it costs possibly hundreds of millions of dollars to bring new devices to market. They got tired of waiting.
In less than a decade, the world comes to an end if you can’t be covered until you’re 26.
Healthcare and education have outpaced inflation for several decades, and now neither are affordable.
Perhaps the solution is to figure out how to reduce the costs?