MedTab ET-100 - care to spend $3,995 on an E Ink device?

[exvaxman]

I was astonished at some of the prices. Very underpowered PCs were selling for $5K as simple protocol converters. In the environment I came from I had to justify a 6% return on investment - same as putting the cash in the bank. At this p[lace - and many medical equipment places - they were lookng at a 900% ROI minimum to put out a new product. One of the high idiocies was a java front end to a datatbase that they thought they could sell for $500K each. A freeware version was already out there.....

[RWood]

We have forgotten the largest single element of cost in any medical device sold in the US, insurance. I would expect insurance to run about $1,200 per unit sold or lent on trial. That is assuming that they have a good track record with past devices.

Add to that selling expenses since with the long lead times involved with medical devices these can be quite high. FDA review and certification costs need to be factored into each unit plus there's always the allowence for maintenance service and repair of units under warrenty. Don't forget G&A expenses and profit.

These are costs that we seldom see as we focus on the hardware and software aspects of the devices alone.

Others have mentioned the vertical market eFlyBook based on the iRex iLiaid by Airinc. It sells for ~$1,500 and packages all of the forms and maps a pilot needs in one jandy portable device. This replaces a large overstuffed briefcase of maps that need to be updated frequently and they alone cost about $4,000 a year. It also replaces the journal/flight book pilots carry and maintain about their flying. From a cost perspective, the eFlyBook is a bargain. From what I know about medical devices, I suspect that the MedTab ET-100 is also a bargain.

[bostonte]

Originally Posted by NatCh

From where I'm sitting, I can tell you that the idea of a fully Electronic Medical Record (EMR) is a really big cookie that larger hospitals are chasing, and from what I can see, it's apparently really hard to do (but that may depend some on how temperamental your medical personnel are).

The temperamental staff is the biggest problem with electronic charting. I was hired by a rather large clinic to develop a strategy for moving to electronic charting.

I began by reviewing the forms they use most often, how they use them, etc. The first thing I noticed was they used a requisition form for lab work on which the doctor would use an ink stamp to put lines in the top right on which to write the patient name, number, etc.

Since it was an internal form, and the ink stamp space was horribly congested to the point one could NEVER read what it said when it was faxed someplace -- I created an almost identical copy of the form, but added a VERY clear and large box at the top in which to put this information (with the fields all labeled, and for simplicity sake in the same order as the stamp).

I replaced their paper form with a paper form. I was just trying to simplify things and make them more efficient BEFORE I threw the computer into the equation.

What happened? Despite our best efforts -- we kept getting lab work forms back from the Doctors with the information crammed into the top corner where the stamp used to be (their stamps were taken away when the form was "corrected"). The clearly labeled easy to write in section for this information that took almost 1/4 of the form --- blank.

This went on for months -- management finally decided to give stamps back and the Doctors went back to them. "But that's how we do it."

So, to get back on topic. If the company hopes to ever sell any of these devices, they need to provide EXTENSIVE support to any hospital that purchases them. They need to be highly customized to how each different practice charts, or the staff will never adopt them and will fight every chance they get. Hence the reason for the high cost (overlooking the just because they can point).

If the company can get the markups it looks like they are on each device, they can afford to give support and training.

[NatCh]

Do you think they could just include a LART with each unit purchased? Or do they need to supply LART operators too?

Our 'temperamental person' problems lie mainly in their inability to agree on a single form to use -- they each have to have a custom one ... that they developed themselves, naturally.

Funny you should mention stamps. The group I work for asked me to implement a feature to replace rubber stamps for marking a particular type of document as having been approved, which I did, replicating the stamp's content exactly. About a year later they asked me to do exactly the same thing, because they'd forgotten that I'd already done it, dug up their grotty old stamps from wherever they'd been buried, and started using them again. Oh, and incidentally were complaining about the undesirable effects that resulted from their incorrect use of the feature I'd built to replace the stamps, in the first place.

Whatayagonnado?

For those who don't already know, a LART is an 'L-User Attitude Readjustment Tool,' AKA Clue Bat, Clue Brick, Clue-by-Four, and several others.