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Indian researchers create a Raspberry-Pi-based device to monitor health
- rscho 5y agoWhat would be really cool and useful would be an open source bedside (ICU/OR) monitor. RPi would probably be a good base, I guess...
- maxwellwhite 5y agoLet’s do it!
- snapetom 5y agoStuff like this is always cool and gee whiz, but it will never muster in the US that I know of, and I suspect most developed countries. Anything on the bedside, especially in ICU, has to be examined by the FDA to the point where they want to know exactly what the chemical composition of parts are. If there's a risk of things releasing fumes that might be dangerous for a sick patient if the device gets too warm, they'll ding it. Diagnostic software powering these devices are scrutinized by the FDA, too.
- rscho 5y agoOf course it would never do in developed countries! For context, I work with such monitors daily in a (very) rich country. I was thinking of the most backwater context you could still find use for it. Some parts of Africa, for instance.
- jbotz 5y agoAh yes, in the US they can't occur the risk of "fumes" from an affordable electronic device, that's why they need to charge people a year's income for a minor emergency room visit. Never mind the fact that for millions in the US the air is toxic, the water is full of lead, and the food full of agro-toxins. But they are lucky, because the FDA makes sure medical devices don't release any accidental fumes and they only cost 2 or 3 magnitudes more than they need to.
- junon 5y agoNo way. Medical devices need very strong guarantees. RaspPi does not offer those. You want a cheap RTSoC.
- rscho 5y agoBut do those include graphical capabilities, USB connectivity, jack for alim, etc. all-in-one and for a few bucks? I am aware medical devices should provide guarantees, but a smaller guarantee is still better than none at all, innit? For context, in many countries people are simply left to die in the most atrocious ways if they cannot afford care. You should see how african people react when they're admitted to the hospital, even in developed countries.
- GravitasFailure 5y ago> but a smaller guarantee is still better than none at all, innit? Raspberry Pi comes with no guarantees at all and has well documented problems with flaky power and burning out SD cards. It works great for the hobbyist/learning system that it was designed for and might even be good enough for the blood testing system in the article, but active monitoring for intensive care? Just...no.
- rscho 5y agoI'm no expert in this field and was genuinely asking, but if someone knows of better things then please go for it!
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- GravitasFailure 5y agoIt's certainly a fair question. I don't work in medical devices, but know people that have, and the problem for medical hardware has two steps: One, build something that won't kill the patient, and then step two is proving that you're correct about step one. Step two is the expensive bit.
- antattack 5y agoI suppose a parallel would be a Mars Helicopter based on off the shelf components vs making one of radiation hardened components. It may work, and it may work very well in fact. However, if you can afford it - you'd opt for something with more reliability and consistency.
- ldiracdelta 5y agoIn economics, the most important question is "as compared to what?" You might be able to afford a gold plated system designed with 15-9's of reliability, but do you want to work 10 hours week to afford that system? On the margin, do you want to have a 10% smaller house to pay for that level of medical awesomeness?
- rramadass 5y agoNot Open Source but relatively cheap : https://shberrymed.com/products/patient-monitor-pm6100 https://shberrymed.com/products/patient-monitor-pm6100 A company called "Anidra" (Australia + India) is offering the full package (HW based on the PM6100 and cloud based Monitoring SW) both for Hospital and Home use: http://www.anidra.com.au/ http://www.anidra.com.au/ and https://www.anidra.in/ https://www.anidra.in/
- programmer_dude 5y agoWeird choice of name Anidra in Hindi means sleeplessness. Nidra is sleep, anidra is its opposite. On second thought, I think they are probably implying their devices (or they themselves) do not sleep.
- Kenji 5y agoThis is a good idea until the shitty SD card that's inside the rasperry pi gets bitflips and corruptions and the patient dies.
- OJFord 5y agoWith titles like this, I always think it must either be trivial nonsense, or (more likely!) the journalist just really missed the point.
- gerdesj 5y agoIt seems that a couple of researchers have used RPis to analyze blood samples in an innovative way. They are published: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9524612 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9524612 So, you (OJFord) could not be bothered with either reading the simplified synopsis or if you did, understanding the original article. Why even bother to comment, when you have nothing to give?
- OJFord 5y agoI have nothing bad to say against the researchers, as I said was likely, and as I ascertained to be the case after that and you commented on, it's just shoddy journalism. RPi is not the interesting part (at a stretch, a proxy for low powered compute?), 'Indian' is not the interesting part (but I can excuse that more readily as similar to 'XYZ university ...') and 'monitor health' is uselessly vague. (The title could apply to a calorie counting app, running (arbitrarily) on a raspberry pi, for example.) This valid contribution is dealt disservice with this title, and 'I (OJFord)' commented on that, 'giving', I hope, the suggestion that it might be better.
- gremloni 5y agoIt’s a relatively descriptive title and accurate to the article. I don’t think it is terrible.
- ssivark 5y agoHere’s a link to the actual paper: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9524612 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9524612 Abstract: The development of a cost-efficient and sensitive platform for biochemical analysis of blood serum and its realization in the low resource areas is one of the imperative challenges to establish a robust healthcare ecosystem. The present work demonstrates the design of a universal platform, capable of performing all biochemical analyses of blood serum by measuring the absorbance of light through the test sample. To verify the working of the developed platform, the concentration of glucose was estimated in blood serum. The detection of glucose has been accomplished in a linear range of 1 mg/dL to 400 mg/dL with detection of limit 1 mg/dL (R2 = 0.9875, n=3). The stability analysis demonstrates improved stability in the output as compared to the conventional analyzer with an average standard deviation of 0.32 calculated for n=5. Human blood samples were tested with the developed platform and the results were in line with the pathology laboratory. The developed platform offers the advantages of automation, low cost, portability, simple instrumentation, flexibility, and an easily accessible interface. Due to the use of a huge processing capability processor, the analysis time reduces to half a minute which yields fast analysis and high throughput. The stability and accuracy also improve owing to the employment of high-resolution electronics components. Overall, the proposed framework is an attractive solution to be incorporated in the low resource area as a universal platform for all biochemistry analysis simply by varying the wavelength of light and reagent.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- tomComb 5y agoI have a common medical condition which is easily monitored via a common blood test. It seems to fluctuate quite a bit, and if I could get frequent readings I could figure out what is affecting it, and I could better understand it's effect on me. But the medical system in my country does not allow for frequent readings, probably for good reason - it would be very expensive. And a hassle going to a lab frequently. So I'm excited to read about this device and hope the tech matures quickly.
- ad404b8a372f2b9 5y agoHow would you go about drawing blood? Is a finger prick good enough for these tests or would you need to know how to draw venous blood?
- CptFribble 5y agoThis is actually how existing diagnostic machines work generally - mix blood or plasma with a reagent, incubate at body temp for some time, measure how the light properties of the sample (color, turbidity, depends on the test) change over time. Some tests measure 1 point at the end of the test, some measure several and construct a non-linear function. The interesting part is that they're building a machine that can get accurate results with low-cost off-the-shelf components. State-of-the-art systems typically cost somewhere between 50k and 500k, which may or may not include service agreements (they break down all the time - wet chemistry) and ongoing costs for supplies. I imagine the main wins in this area would be: - built with low-cost/commodity components (done) - small physical size for transport (done) -- systems come in a variety of sizes from bedside to the size of a small car, depending on where you want to run them (operating suite/doctor's office vs central lab) and the volume you need. - expanded operating temperature and humidity -- existing systems have fairly tight tolerances on humidity especially, all the systems I worked with had environmental sensors installed nearby. - low-power enough to run on batteries or small generators easily in remote environments That these women are working their way down the list is impressive and much needed. As mentioned in the article, reagents are available commercially so that part is relatively "solved," although depending on the test they can be quite expensive and have their own cold-storage and transport problems for remote areas. The other big problem is affordable control material to ensure the systems are still accurate, and calibration material to adjust system constants when they inevitably drift (same cost/storage/transport problems as reagents). Still though, I'm glad they're making progress. I look forward to more! Source: worked in lab diagnostics for a while
- rex_lupi 5y agoIt's a neat system, although I fear the major hurdles (in the early days at least) will be getting a license for a diagnostics lab with these equipments and doctors approving the test results.
- 908B64B197 5y agoSpaceX did the same thing. They took a very complex system (rockets) that was custom-made and had to be extremely reliable. And then they looked at every component and tried to re-engineer it to optimize for costs. And they have been hugely successful doing it.
- spraveenitpro 5y agoElizabeth holmes would have loved this.
- rramadass 5y agoWhy aren't more low cost Medical devices available easily and cheaply? Given the power/price ratio we have achieved with cellphones, why can't the same be done in the field of Medical devices? For example, i was looking for a all-in-one monitoring device for an elderly patient and came across "PM6100" made by "Shanghai Berry Electronics" (https://shberrymed.com/products/patient-monitor-pm6100 https://shberrymed.com/products/patient-monitor-pm6100) Low-cost but still more expensive than many cellphones. These things should be commodity priced. It almost feels like there is some "organized cartel" preventing the invention and marketing of low-cost medical devices.
- ComodoHacker 5y ago>These things should be commodity priced. These things couldn't be commodity priced (comparable to a smartphone) until they are manufactured at similar scale. You just don't need as much medical devices.
- rramadass 5y agoI don't buy this commonly given excuse at all. Companies like Omron/Rossmax etc. have made BP monitors dirt cheap (and now pulse oxymeters). Add a few more functionalities needed for patient monitoring, price accordingly and you have a market. It is well within the capabilities of existing technologies (both HW and SW) and though there are stringent regulations i don't think they are the limiting factor. I am convinced the Companies involved in the manufacture of these devices (eg. GE Healthcare) are artificially keeping the prices of these high enough to deter widespread adoption.
- robertlagrant 5y ago> the Companies involved in the manufacture of these devices (eg. GE Healthcare) are artificially keeping the prices of these high enough to deter widespread adoption One of the ways this will happen is the regulatory burden required to bring a product to market, which they will be keen to keep in place as a competitive moat.
- ludovicianul 5y agoIsn't this Theranos 2.0?
- detaro 5y agowhy do you think so?
- betimsl 5y agotheranos 3.0 :D
- detaro 5y agowhy do you think so?