This showed up on my FB feed the other day; it raises a very good point.
Maori.Geek writes a very good post on something I never considered before. Why are these essentially simple machines so very expensive?
Name a technology that is more useful, more educational, more interesting, and more overpriced than a[n] ultrasound machine. You can look inside of living things without the need for a[sic] powerful magnets or radioactivity and it is basically made from a speaker and microphone outputting to a screen.
Why doesn't every high school biology class room have an ultrasound to show how muscles work, and hearts beat? Why don't doctors have them immediately handy like a stethoscope or thermometer? Why can I not get one just because I am interested in how my injuries are healing? Probably because "a £20,000 [$30,000USD] scanner is generally classed as low cost."
After I spent $200 on a doctor's visit because of an injured foot, where they used a cabinet sizes[sic] ultrasound machine that looked like a 1950’s TV, I wondered how much it would cost to purchase an ultrasound for myself. After a[sic] finding that a "cheap" ultrasound is still $8000, I just couldn’t reconcile the cost with the technology and the simplicity and usefulness of such a tool. So I decided to do a little research.
After seeing one in person regularly over the last 9 months it struck a nerve; how useful would it be to have an ultrasound machine available at every doctor's surgery? Or in every bio-lab at high school?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2016, @04:27PM
Time to follow your dream -- ultrasound everywhere!
Soylentils with free time will gladly help you write the code?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Dunbal on Saturday February 27 2016, @04:44PM
Why doesn't every high school biology class room have an ultrasound to show how muscles work, and hearts beat?
Because of the 3 month course that would be necessary to teach the class to understand what they are actually looking at.
Why don't doctors have them immediately handy like a stethoscope or thermometer?
Because a sonographic image is only as good as the person who is performing it. It's a skill that takes training and needs to be developed. However even among trained sonographers there are good ones and there are bad ones, just like there are Formula 1 drivers who almost always win races, and Formula 1 drivers who hardly ever win races. Therefore it makes a lot more logistical sense to have the good people focus on doing sonograms (it's something called SPECIALIZATION) and investing your time doing something else.
how useful would it be to have an ultrasound machine available at every doctor's surgery?
Not as useful as you'd think, because of the above. At some point you have to realize that you can't do everything. "Jack of all trades" has a second part to it: "AND MASTER OF NONE".
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday February 27 2016, @06:14PM
Disagree. Ultrasound is kinda complicated, yeah, but you don't need six years of college to learn to read them.
Let's contrast ultrasound technology to ages old trades - carpentry, for instance. There are a lot of jobs for which you need a master carpenter. It's complicated, and a plain old journeyman just doesn't make the grade. There are other jobs for which you only need a third class helper. And, there are all manner of jobs for which any old handy-man hobbyist will suffice.
The concept of ultrasound isn't all that complicated. Sound waves penetrate through softer tissue, and bounce back from denser tissue, blah blah blah. A chimp might not understand that, but a lot of chimp-like humans can understand it. I can name some ex-presidents who can grasp the concept. You're right, in that, if a very high quality image is required to make a medical diagnosis, then you are going to want a master to take the readings, and to read those images. But, there is no reason in the world that ultrasound shouldn't be commonplace in biology classrooms. Hobbyist quality equipment, under semi-controlled conditions can be fun, entertaining, AND educational.
Pilots? If you need a jumbo jet to land on the island of Guam, you probably want an expert pilot. If you're trying to land a Cessna in the middle of Iowa, well, kids do it all the time. Not to mention that very young kids manage to land and take off with hobby class radio control aircraft. I haven't even mentioned "drones" yet, have I?
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Sunday February 28 2016, @12:10AM
Disagree. Ultrasound is kinda complicated, yeah, but you don't need six years of college to learn to read them.
I said 3 months, not six years. What exactly are you expecting to see and "learn", anyway? And if you're so adamant, why do you need a machine when say a video recording of different ultrasounds would do. You could have a DVD full of them for the cost of a DVD.
Let's contrast ultrasound technology to ages old trades - carpentry, for instance. There are a lot of jobs for which you need a master carpenter. It's complicated, and a plain old journeyman just doesn't make the grade. There are other jobs for which you only need a third class helper. And, there are all manner of jobs for which any old handy-man hobbyist will suffice.
So you're ok with kids learning shoddy work from 2nd rate "teachers". Is it also ok if half of the math problems, examples and exercises in the math textbook are wrong?
The concept of ultrasound isn't all that complicated. Sound waves penetrate
Don't need to explain it to me, I know it better than you.
If you need a jumbo jet to land on the island of Guam, you probably want an expert pilot. If you're trying to land a Cessna in the middle of Iowa, well, kids do it all the time.
TFA mentions (among other things) ultrasound being used in a teaching environment. I don't know about you but normally I expect my teacher to have more experience than me. I certainly would not like to learn to fly a jumbo jet from a guy who is a Cessna pilot.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by darnkitten on Sunday February 28 2016, @01:16AM
No, but I am in favor of kids being able to see what's going on under their skin in real time--that increases the wow factor, especially if it's reinforced by lesson and lab.
Better yet, what if you could show elementary school kids what's going on under their skin in real time (even if you had to bring in a PA or the school nurse to operate the school's ultrasound)--imagine cries of "Gross!" followed by enthusiasm: "Hey mum, I saw my own heart beating today! It moved like an octopus! It was so awesome!"
Science is cool, but only if you can show kids that science is cool.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday February 28 2016, @11:26AM
What exactly are you expecting to see and "learn", anyway?
What exactly are you asking here? Is the human body not worth learning about? Is ultrasound not worth learning about?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2016, @06:29PM
The alleged difficulty in using an ultrasound machine doesn't explain why the device itself is so expensive.
It takes experience to get good at anything. Access is required to gain experience. If the device were cheaper and more readily available then it would be more accessible and there would be more people with more experience. More people would be good at using them.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Dunbal on Sunday February 28 2016, @12:14AM
The alleged difficulty in using an ultrasound machine doesn't explain why the device itself is so expensive.
That's covered in the subject of my reply. Medical devices are expensive because they are medical devices. I have little disposable plastic coverings that I throw away for every patient and they cost $1 each where they could easily cost a fraction of a cent each. Why do they cost that? Because it's "medical equipment". The cost gets passed on to you, which gets passed on to your insurance company, which then gets passed on to everyone. It should be a crime but it isn't, so the price is going to go up until no one can afford it anymore.
(Score: 3, Touché) by darnkitten on Sunday February 28 2016, @01:24AM
Similarly in the library world--we tend to be municipal or collegiate entities, and so we are assumed to have pots of government money lying around, so anything we purchase from a library distributor (including books) comes with a premium price tag attached. As a cash-strapped rural librarian, I've become adept at finding alternative sources for common expensive supplies.
I'm just glad my purchases don't have to be certified "medical equipment."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Sunday February 28 2016, @12:05PM
Missing the obvious analogy with kids looking thru microscopes is useful, even if it takes a dozen or so more years to get a job as a pathologist, or immune system researcher, or a microbiologist, or ...
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Saturday February 27 2016, @04:45PM
My dentist goes to conferences in Europe quite often. A little while ago, he was talking about this new machine that was approved for use in Europe, but no in the USA. The company selling it was unable to get approval in the USA. Eventually, the company sold out to an American company, which was quickly able to get approval in the USA, but now the machine cost something like 5 or 10 times as much.
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Saturday February 27 2016, @06:49PM
well for dental work this might be especially true!! In the UK they are trialling rapid remineralisation of teeth to prevent the need for fillings!!
Here in the US, I have had dentists "offer to fill that", since they get paid per filling. I always defer asking which tooth, and somehow it never gets mentioned again.
There is an important purpose for medical devices being rigorous and fit for purpose - it does seem irrationally over protective sometimes...
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Sunday February 28 2016, @12:24AM
In the U.K. Dentists get paid per filling, nhs or private.
(Score: 2) by legont on Saturday February 27 2016, @04:48PM
Why is it so hard to "invent"?
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday February 27 2016, @06:17PM
Wheels on bags? Yeah, it's been done. I feel so embarrassed when I watch the office people coming in. Ten, fifteen pounds of laptop and books? Better use some wheels!
https://www.google.com/search?q=wheeled+luggage&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8#q=wheeled+luggage&safe=off&tbm=shop [google.com]
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by legont on Saturday February 27 2016, @07:27PM
The point was that it took 6000 years for "science" to discover.
Wheels on Luggage were invented in 1970 by a Mr. Bernard Sadow. The wheels on luggage was first introduced to the market in October 1970 to Macy's. To this day he does not receive licensing fees from manufacturers selling bags using his 1972 patent on rolling luggage.
http://www.answers.com/Q/Who_invented_wheels_on_luggage#ixzz281htsG1P [answers.com]
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday February 27 2016, @07:56PM
Well I certainly *hope* he's not receiving fees today, his patent expired over twenty years ago.
He should certainly have gotten some prior to that though, unless he was just feeling generous.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Saturday February 27 2016, @08:33PM
I disagree. If you were to time-travel with your bag-on-wheels into the middle ages, you quickly would notice that those wheels are completely useless, as they only work on sufficiently flat, clean floors. You'd hardly find those back then, and especially not where you would use your bag. You'd probably soon curse the day you decided to take your wheeled bag with you instead of a big backpack.
It doesn't make sense to include the time where an invention would not have been useful in the time "it took to invent it".
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Saturday February 27 2016, @11:47PM
I'm guessing that any person in what was then considered average physical condition (hint, we're fat and weak) wouldn't have bothered with wheels for such a light load. For larger, heavier loads they had such things as carts.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by legont on Sunday February 28 2016, @02:18AM
The real answer, at least the last time, was macho and feminism. Similar to the issue of girls in IT nowadays.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/05/business/05road.html [nytimes.com]
So why did it take so long for wheeled luggage to emerge? Mr. Sadow recalled the strong resistance he met on those early sales calls, when he was frequently told that men would not accept suitcases with wheels. “It was a very macho thing,” he said.
But it was also a time of huge change in the culture of travel, as a growing number of people flew, airports became bigger and far more women began traveling alone, especially on business trips. It had taken a long time, but common sense and the quest for convenience prevailed. The suitcase acquired wheels; travelers no longer routinely needed porters and bellhops.
But again, my real point was that it seems easy to make ultrasound devices, and they will definitely find many uses, and as usual even such a simple improvement meets serious resistance.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday February 27 2016, @10:46PM
Then there's this:
http://blog.nearfuturelaboratory.com/2010/12/15/a-wry-look-at-wheels-on-luggage/ [nearfuturelaboratory.com]
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday February 27 2016, @04:48PM
Oh, golly gee, the materials science involved in using the right kind of ceramic in the piezoelectric transducer elements, the impedance matching of every one of those elements, the engineering involved in the layout of the arrays of those elements, the electrical engineering of how those elements fire and how the signals are received, the signal processing algorithms used to display the data, all the hardware and software debugging necessary to make it all work...
...why are those machines so goddamned expensive? They're just a speaker and a microphone outputting shit to a screen?
Or, alternately, "I have no fucking idea how ultrasound works."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2016, @05:39PM
Perhaps a bit naive, but in a little defense of the submitter, the hardware is not very challenging. Ultrasound transducers are a dime-a-dozen and the requirements for driving them isn't either. However, the software side is non-trivial. You need to smartly send signals out and smartly detect them when they come back, and you need to account for the different types of material through which they propagate, then you need to take all those time delays and turn it into an image. Again, I don't think any of this is beyond a dedicated DIY'er, and it would probably be a really fun project to take on. I'm too lazy to look, but I bet there are relatively cheap ultrasonic imagers in other fields that are not designed to be used on people, which obviously is where a good deal of the cost associated with these things come from.
Years ago my wife was pregnant and we went in for an ultrasound. The tech did the exam and the doctor came in later to talk about it. Afterwards I said to the doc (I work in science labs, so I'm not intimidated by machines that go "ping") how cool those things are and, "come on, you can't tell me that after work you don't stick that all over yourself and see what you can see! I'd have so much fun with that." She looked at me very oddly and politely said "no." After she left the room, a couple of minutes later the tech came in and rolled the machine out. :)
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Saturday February 27 2016, @06:26PM
"years ago"
In 1988, my wife had her first ultrasound. I don't know if that's more years ago than you, or less. But, at that time, we could pay an extra buck or ten to have the tech make a VHS copy of the ultrasound recording. It was really cool, because the tech chased around after the little squirmy thing, trying to determine the baby's sex. He finally settled down, and allowed us all to see that he had hold of his little pecker, like he was waving it at us. "I'm a boy, see? I got a weenie!"
As I recall, the tech wasn't a college grad, but the radiologist who had to see the video before the baby's sex became official had plenty of degrees. So, you've got to have skill to use the machines, but you have to have degrees to pass judgement on the images created by the machines. Imaginge that.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2016, @06:54PM
If these things have been around since the 1980's any software or hardware that was considered complicated back then is simple by today's standards. With advancements in computer languages and hardware a calculator the size of a building back then is far less powerful and capable and complicated than my phone. Just look how much more complicated software and operating systems are today compared to back then.
The most logical reason they are so expensive, in the U.S. anyways, is simply because you need FDA approval and the FDA limits the number of devices they approve and the approval process is unnecessarily expensive. A lot of people are making a lot of money off of this. It's like with everything else in the U.S. (ie: taxi cab medallion monopolies among other things) the government aims to limit competition in exchange for corporate kickbacks.
(Score: 2) by gringer on Saturday February 27 2016, @06:56PM
I bet there are relatively cheap ultrasonic imagers
Yeah, like the one in TFA, for example.
Ask me about Sequencing DNA in front of Linus Torvalds [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 29 2016, @08:28AM
Reading this comment, an intelligent sounding response to the most technical sounding answer I saw scanning the comments, I'm now able to translate the summary/question and have my interest satisfied for now- The questioner basically wants you to not be so lazy, and tell them which one, and if there is any well-known obvious health risk of misuse.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday February 27 2016, @06:19PM
That shit's all computed, after all. You don't have small armies of engineers sitting at drawing tables, laying everything out by hand, with a senior engineer stalking around, trying to make it all fit into the master plan.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday February 28 2016, @01:21AM
In retrospect, what I think happened was that whomever said that saw one of those ultrasound range-fingers for Arduino robots and figured that medical ultrasound was something that could be cobbled together with a sensor and Arduino.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 28 2016, @11:41AM
So how might that complexity compare to a modern smartphone then? A high-ppi display, cameras, speaker, mic, wifi, GPS, accelerometer, etc.; and all the software to control and process that; all built into a package that you can comfortably hold in your hand. For less than $100.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Saturday February 27 2016, @04:54PM
Ultrasound machines are medical devices. Thus all regulations about medical devices apply. That makes it expensive.
On the other hand, it also protects you from machines that might just destroy your body instead of imaging it, for sending too intense ultrasound. Remember that one application of ultrasound is to destroy gallstones.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by mhajicek on Saturday February 27 2016, @11:58PM
Came here to say that. I machine prototypes for a medical device company. If the parts are just going to be for engineers to play with for refining their designs, or for sales people to bring to trade shows, I can just make the stuff and call it good. If there's any chance of using the stuff on a human, every single step from receiving the certified material to final cleaning and packaging must be done by procedure with paperwork for tracability. There's also liability insurance to pay for, which is where a monstrous portion of healthcare costs go to in the US. If that cheap ultrasonic transducer somehow gives off an overpowered pulse and injures your fetus (they are used to break up kidney stones) you'll bee suing everyone involved for everything they've got.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2016, @05:03PM
Whenever I see something like this, I always think it is the result of the product using top-down pricing and the person using bottom-up and forgetting about ratcheting. Bottom-up pricing is where you take the actual costs of production, shipping, etc. and add a margin or use a multiplier to come up with your final price. Top-down pricing is when you set your price based on what people are willing to pay based on market research. For most things, big companies use top-down pricing, as they have huge pricing stats and can experiment. Also, most of their customers don't or can't know what the actual costs of the product are and can only comparison shop on the surface. Although, it is worth noting that places usually don't use purely top-down or bottom-up, but consider both.
Additionally, prices tend to ratchet: to go only in one direction. So, what could have happened is that at one time machines were actually around $30,000 with a good enough margin. As the costs went down with technology, why make yours cheaper when everyone is about the same price, you run the risk of looking "cheap" enough that there is a catch, and the difference is pure profit anyway. Another consideration is that because prices in general inflate, there is even less incentive for you to get cheaper, unless the whole market moves.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday February 27 2016, @11:00PM
Risk of looking cheap?
If it does what its supposed to do, there is always an incentive to take that business away from the big dogs by actually being cheaper regardless of looks.
There are probably a boatload of patents on this tech, and what has fallen off patents is still blocked by better tech still on patents.
And don't forget the lawyers and malpractice insurance. Years ago (15-ish) there was a scare phase (before the anti-vaxers latched on to Andrew Wakefield), concerning safety of ultrasound. That probably drove the price up, and made it a prescription item for the most part.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 28 2016, @01:43AM
I think you missed the GP's point in that he or she was not referring to the physical looks of the thing. The exact words were
you run the risk of looking "cheap" enough that there is a catch
The use of quotation marks and the rest of the phrase makes me think that the reference was to the customer thinking the product was missing features or lower quality or generally bad due to the price.
Out of curiosity, if you were looking to buy something and all the options were in the $30,000 range but one was in the $10,000 range, what would you think? Especially if the cheapest one was from some company you've never heard of but the other 3 are practically institutions.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday February 28 2016, @02:02AM
For 1/3rd the price, I'd get a warranty and dab my toe in the cheap pond.
If that proved successful, I'd jump in whole hog. So would everyone else.
Demand would raise the cheap price some, but lack of demand would drop the expensive price more.
Unless the high price guys are hiding behind a wall of patents such disparity can't exist for long.
This kind of worry about being too cheap exists in the low-priced items (retail) market far longer than it does in the big ticket market. For one thing, there probably isn't a "status symbol effect" like paying twice as much for an iPhone in large ticket items that actually save lives. In that price range its sort of like the Caterpillar VS Komatsu [blogspot.com] fight where the equipment is interchangeable, and what you buy is often influenced/dictated on how the Yen is doing vs the Dollar at that particular instant.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Dr Spin on Saturday February 27 2016, @05:32PM
Many years ago, I worked as a consultant for two of the manufacturers of MRI scanners. I was charged with a feasibility study for a cost down at both, simultaneously (they obviously did not know that :-). There had been significant advances in computing and super-conducting magnets at the time.
The question was: "Can we reduce the manufacturing cost from £10M to £1M?"
I participated in the two studies, with numerical computational experts, medical researchers, and people supplying specialty equipment (magnets, detectors, processors, displays, etc).
There was no question - technically it could be done.
Then we handed over our documentation to the bean counters. Yes, they could fund it.
Finaly to the industry analysts: Yeah, but everyone in the business (I think there were only three at the time) is making big bucks. None of your competitors is going to jump first.
Conclusion: Lets just continue with the current design.
The initial concept study had shown that the price reduction would lead to a significant increase in market value as the number of locations that would install the new generation would be more than 10 times as many, and at least initially, the retail price would only decline slowly. Theoretically, the first mover advantage could be huge.
The lesson is: Decision makers are not all that capable with spreadsheets. They have MBAs, not skills. A banker will trust an MBA over a spreadsheet every time. Hence financial clusterfucks.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 3, Touché) by maxwell demon on Saturday February 27 2016, @05:40PM
Well, maybe instead of a spreadsheet you should have shown them a PowerPoint presentation, as the MBAs do. ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2016, @08:45PM
"Here we have page one of the spreadsheet, notice the smiley faces and thumbs ups indicating how great the analysis is"
"Here we have page two of the... HEY WAKE UP!"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 07 2016, @10:15PM
You put in the loud upbeat music on the powerpoint and play it over the project/conference room speakers to keep everyone awake and excited about your presentation :)
(Score: 1) by dr_barnowl on Sunday February 28 2016, @11:01AM
What do you think the relatively easily available YBCO tapes would do to those numbers today?
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Saturday February 27 2016, @05:52PM
Why are Ultrasound Machines so Expensive?
I don't know. How much do you think they should cost?
The aim of this work has been to create a product which could be manufactured for £30-40
And a laudable aim it is too - though I assume from the use of the word "aim" that it isn't there yet.
Echo data is gathered as the transducer is scanned back and forth across the skin and the PC then performs the focussing and other operations to generate an image up to 4 times per second.
Only 4 images per second (nowhere near enough to be any use for diagnosing a whole range of heart problems and the like), when presumably the standard machines do at least 30, perhaps as high as 60. So maybe a general purpose PC still isn't capable of replacing the tech inside existing ultrasound scanners.
So I guess, for now, the answer is "because no-one's been able to make a cheaper one." And they still haven't.
(not forgetting all the costs intrinsic in creating a medical device that must pass certification and all that paperwork)
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 3, Insightful) by wonkey_monkey on Saturday February 27 2016, @05:54PM
Why are these essentially simple machines
Bzzzt. Citation needed. Have you tried to build one?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 3, Informative) by gringer on Saturday February 27 2016, @06:50PM
Name a technology that is more useful, more educational, more interesting, and more overpriced than a[n] ultrasound machine.
A DNA sequencer.
Excluding the MinION (which no one believes is a real sequencer anyway), DNA sequencers are typically hundreds of thousands of dollars, sometimes even a few million dollars. The cost of a single sequencing run will set you back $500~$10,000, even after dropping down all that capital to purchase the sequencer in the first place.
Ask me about Sequencing DNA in front of Linus Torvalds [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Monday February 29 2016, @08:05AM
So how much should they cost?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by gringer on Monday February 29 2016, @06:40PM
About the price of a refrigerator, a laser, a digital camera, a 3D printer, and some pipettes. That would be about a 10th of their current cost. That's for the sequencers that need all that stuff.
But something that doesn't need any of that could be a lot cheaper. I consider the MinION device to be priced at a reasonable level ($1000); the consumable cost is still quite high ($800~$1500), although on-par with other systems. The prediction last year from Oxford Nanopore Technologies was that the cost of a 1h sequencing run might go down to as low as $20 with a little tweak of the technology, but there's not much demand for sequencing at such a low cost because the competition is so expensive.
Ask me about Sequencing DNA in front of Linus Torvalds [youtube.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Covalent on Sunday February 28 2016, @05:23AM
A quick Google of that phrase brought up:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2648933/Pregnant-paranoid-The-mums-buying-DIY-ultrasound-devices-check-babies-frightening-consequences.html [dailymail.co.uk]
http://www.livescience.com/46952-ivf-home-monitoring-vaginal-ultrasounds.html'' [livescience.com]
on the first page alone.
Now, I get the point of your argument - everything is getting cheaper, why not ultrasound, too? But apparently they are getting cheaper...
There is a parallel to another field: Calculators. In 1993 you could buy a TI-85 graphing calculator for around $100. 23 years later, a TI-84 graphing calculator (the number went down one...because...reasons?) is around $100. They do essentially the same thing. Why no reduction? Same reason as ultrasound:
1. You have no choice thanks to business-friendly regulation.
So I suggest building your own super-cheap ultrasound (plans abound) and use it to your heart's content. But don't think you can sell it...you're not a big enough business to get your own regulations. :)
You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into.
(Score: 1) by dr_barnowl on Sunday February 28 2016, @10:56AM
Veterinary ultrasound units are MUCH cheaper.
You can get a veterinary US for less than £1,000. I had one of these units on my desk at one point because a well-known abortion clinic in the UK was wanting to use it to check that they'd finished the abortions properly - so I had to figure out the proprietary serial protocol it used to download images to a computer.
We all had a good play with it - maybe the image quality wasn't up to the standard of the medical units, and the software was definitely quite primitive, but I'm sure the vast majority of the hardware was exactly the same as medical-certified units that cost 10x the price.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/like/231650995998?adgroupid=13585920426&hlpht=true&hlpv=2&rlsatarget=pla-131843261346&adtype=pla&ff3=1&lpid=122&poi=&ul_noapp=true&limghlpsr=true&googleloc=9046564&device=c&chn=ps&campaignid=207297426&crdt=0&ff12=67&ff11=ICEP3.0.0-L&ff14=122&viphx=1&ops=true&ff13=80 [ebay.co.uk]
I'm guessing the sole reason the medical units are expensive is because regulation means that they don't have sufficient competition.
(Score: 2) by datapharmer on Sunday February 28 2016, @12:15PM
In the U.S. at least it is due to Regulation by the FDA. This requires any medical device to be certified, and any change requires recertification. This means repeating a costly (hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars) and lengthy (many months to years) review any time so much as a chip is replaced with the equivalent part. So if there is a manufacturing shortfall on a usb chipset you can't just switch from Intel to nvidia or even from Intel to another Intel chip without a costly process to prove that the chip does the same thing as the old chip or even more costly maybe it is different in some way.
This results in a huge barrier to entry leading to lack of competition and means there is little incentive for existing players to update their technology because of possible improvements or cost savings due both to lack of competition and the high cost they would incur due to the change.