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Second Sight left users of its retinal implants in the dark
- kiwih 5y agoFascinating article, definitely prompts thoughts around the abandonment of technology... From a technical standpoint, I wonder how hard it would be to reverse engineer the wireless protocol that the implant is expecting, so that a custom camera/software could be used to beam in the data? That wouldn't help if the implant fails, but for cases like Jeroen (from the article) who dropped his VPU and needed to crowdsource a replacement, it might be a godsend.
- mmastrac 5y agoYes, definitely would be worth it to try and dump the code from a broken VPU and do whatever we can to reverse it. I wonder if a small hacker collective could get in touch with him?
- post_break 5y agoI thought this was about that app that lets you help blind people by using their camera and you tell them what you see. This is way more sinister. I couldnt imagine depending on something like this and then it's just gone. It would be like having contacts with the worst vision in the world then being like sorry we don't make that kind any more.
- blunte 5y ago"cute" titles should be reserved for tabloids. Say the real thing as best you can in the title, especially when human (or any creature) suffering is involved.
- KevinGlass 5y agoFrankly, I'm not surprised there was no backup plan in case the company went out of business. The quote from the engineer is telling, “We didn’t sell any more, we didn’t make any more, we didn’t have anything to do with it anymore.” Like a company discontinuing a model of Bluetooth speaker or size of tire, as if the implant isn't a permanent part of their patient's bodies. Just leaving a small division that supported existing users, even with just spare parts, would not have been cost prohibitive. It sounds like the suits demanded profitability and literally left them customers in the dark. I wonder if in the coming years and more and more biotech implant companies come to market some will be required for long term support. Maybe their relevant IP becomes public domain if the device is not "supported"?
- dylan604 5y agoThis is a perfect case study on what should be required (legislation??) and considered before licensing a biotech company. These all should have the strictest warranties in the end user's favor. I know I know, wish in one hand, shit in the other. See which fills up faster.
- themaninthedark 5y agoWe have laws concerning doctors, hospitals and codes of medical ethics that govern health care. I am sure that there are cases where a hospital shutdown due to bankruptcy without transferring their patients but that is not the norm. We should hold other companies in this space to the same standard. Edit: >To be maintained to satisfy retention requirements under federal and state laws. Maintenance of medical records is especially significant if the organization is defined as a Covered Entity 1 under HIPAA. Failure to maintain and protect medical records can lead to significant fines and penalties even during organization closings and bankruptcy proceedings. http://metalquest.com/files/Medical_Record_Considerations_During_Bankruptcy.pdf http://metalquest.com/files/Medical_Record_Considerations_Du...
- p1necone 5y agoI don't think companies should be allowed to sell products like this (requires invasive surgery, long term maintenance, more invasive surgery if something goes wrong) directly to patients. They need to sell to the government/health insurance companies, and provide all the tools/training/equipment for those organizations to do the long term support for patients.
- theossuary 5y agoHonestly this seems like a good idea. If a company stops selling/supporting a product (or never starts), its IP rights should be forfeit. Require them to be sold to a company willing to sell/support the device, or they should become public domain. This change would probably fix most issues with current US IP law.
- sneak 5y ago
- hollasch 5y agoLooks like more ammunition for the right-to-repair movement.
- igor47 5y agoOr to insist on open source for any hardware implanted in my body. Of course, this is often easier said than done. https://www.thearticle.com/what-happens-when-software-becomes-a-matter-of-life-and-death https://www.thearticle.com/what-happens-when-software-become...
- kiba 5y agoWhat about prosthesis that are worn, like hearing aids?
- hammyhavoc 5y agoIMO, yes. If it aids a disability or some kind of personal problem that someone was born with, inflicted upon themselves, or had inflicted upon them, or had naturally occur, then absolutely. I also believe that we should put the greater good before profits. Every time. We should not paywall quality of living, especially the senses.
- DoreenMichele 5y agoBut if you say you wish there was less emphasis on splashy headline grabbing medicine like organ transplants and more on helping people keep their "original equipment from the manufacturer" you are a rabble rouser or something. :/
- themaninthedark 5y agoFour reactions: 1. I feel bad for those who had the chance to see and then lost it. 2. Sounds like a normal bankruptcy, where all the focus is on making sure someone gets their money and not supporting those who were clients. 3. Maybe we should require some sort of insurance(and support agreements) for companies who are making medical equipment, esp. implants, so that if somethings like this does happen there is a safety net for the vulnerable people who either volunteered or paid for these things. 4. The words "Move Fast and break things" and xAAS went through my head and made me horrified.
- esyir 5y ago"Hi, we're here to repo your artifical heart. " There's a movie on that exact topic out there, though u don't recall the name.
- JetSpiegel 5y agoRepo Man, with Jude Law and Forest Whittaker. Totally worth it. Not to be confused with Repo The Genetic Opera, worth it as well, for different reasons. This has Paris Hilton in a bit part, and it's still amazing.
- p1necone 5y agoThis seems like the obvious end result of letting private startups perform medical care with long term maintenance requirements on people.
- tomatotomato37 5y agoHow on earth do you mismanage a company so badly that you can literally give sight to the blind and still go bankrupt? Even at a $500k treatment there should be more than enough aging millionaires willing to buy their way out of their own body's infallibilities
- sterlind 5y agothis doesn't surprise me at all. I've had many negative experiences with companies that make disability aids. the target market is poor and vulnerable, they're often monopolies, and they can charge tons of money for crappy tech through insurance. I bet insurance companies declined to pay what they wanted and they decided to pack up shop in search of a bigger exit. wonder if they ever lose sleep about their abandoned users.
- masklinn 5y agoAll this, plus the fact that there are lots of pathologies which can lead to similar results, so the effective target market for assistive devices tends to be much smaller than even the small market originally expected. Further shrunk by communities “closing up” from a combination of having been burned too many times, discrimination / in-group assistance, and viewing attempts to “fix” them as ableism, accommodation refusal, and further efforts to shun them / discriminate against them / divide them. See e.g. colchear implants in the deaf community.
- subroutine 5y agoThey can't really give sight to the blind - from the article: Normal vision, this is not. Patients and doctors alike stress that the Argus II provides a kind of artificial vision, really a brand-new sense that people must learn how to use. Argus II users perceive shades of gray that appear and disappear as they move their heads. So it's not like millionaires with blurring are going to be getting in line. This seems like it's for the totally blind. Perceive also: https://secondsight.com/discover-argus/ https://secondsight.com/discover-argus/ https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/eyes/financials?mod=mw_quote_tab https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/eyes/financials?...
- 5y ago
- advael 5y agoI've said before that I think it should be illegal to sunset a device without open-sourcing the technology needed to support it. Medical implants of any kind are an especially compelling case for this Probably medical devices should also have very strict requirements regarding auto-updates, including provisions that prevent them from being remotely disabled This seems like a problem we can't solve without legislation. We need either these sorts of legal requirements for implantable devices, or to blanket ban private firms from working in this space. I think the former would be preferable
- varenc 5y ago> including provisions that prevent them from being remotely disabled From the article, none of these implants were remotely disabled. The article's first paragraph is deceptively written to make it seem like that though. Further down it clarifies: > But in 2013, after four years of regular use, Campbell’s system shut down in the subway station, and despite some repair attempts by Second Sight, never worked again. So it sounds like a random hardware failure, which the company attempted to repair, but failed. Also in 2013 Second Sight was still 6+ years away from going bankrupt. Seems like this implant wasn't replaced/repaired because it would have required another surgery, not because of the bankruptcy.
- weird-eye-issue 5y agoThe article is incredibly misleading. They don't mention the year that the events in the first paragraph happened until halfway down the page and even if you read that far you might not have connected the two. Her implant failing is not even related to the company going bankrupt (although maybe it was a precursor)
- YeBanKo 5y agoThe article is not even a slightly bit misleading, if you read it in full and without any prior expectation or reading other comments. Here is a quote: "took hundreds of patients on a roller-coaster ride of technological innovations, regulatory successes, medical and financial setbacks, and a near-total meltdown" – this is not simply about how they abandoned the tech or almost went bankrupt. This is also about the challenges they and their patients faced along the way.
- renewiltord 5y ago> With all the overhead of sales and regulatory people, it wasn’t profitable LOL. All the regulation and they didn't protect the patients and they didn't help the company.
- vkou 5y agoIf there were no regulations on medical devices, a lot more people would be getting hurt by fraudsters selling snake oil. It's like grousing about a city's water supply getting contaminated once, and demanding that the remedy is to shut down the water treatment plant. The plant didn't even protect people! We should just drink raw, untreated lakewater!
- drugstorecowboy 5y agoUnless it turns out that the water treatment plant isn't in fact doing anything but is still a cost, in which case yes, you might as well drink the raw lake water. Perhaps all the people in this town would be better off if they would each boil their own water. It could be that we all end up better off without the treatment plant...
- threshold 5y ago[flagged]
- tpoacher 5y agoHow has no-one here made a Deus Ex reference yet? It's like a story straight out of the Human Revolution game!
- trhway 5y agoCar makers are required to maintain parts availability for 10 years. I think it would be reasonable to have at least similar provisions for bionic parts and service. Say requirements for insurance/trust fund as part of FDA approval. Thus it will be priced in from the start.
- hammyhavoc 5y agoYes, absolutely. We need to push for things like this, at a minimum, if not making everything open source when a company goes belly up who dealt with major breakthroughs like this.
- JetAlone 5y agoThe Hubris of mortals. Something tells me we are going to see some real horrifying stuff when Silicon Hills moves on to its MVP showcase for resurrecting the dead.
- hammyhavoc 5y agoWhen they do what?
- YeBanKo 5y agoThere is a bunch of comments stating that the article is misleading. For example, referring to the first paragraph with the woman describing how her device stopped working. The company's abandoning the tech and almost going bankrupt is only a part of the story, albeit central. They did not disable her device remotely, and they still worked on the tech at the time, but they COULD NOT repair the device: Barbara Campbell, who received her implant during the clinical trial of the Argus II... But in 2013, after four years of regular use, Campbell’s system shut down in the subway station, and despite some repair attempts by Second Sight, never worked again. While she talked with her doctors about having the implant removed, she ultimately decided that the risks of another surgery weren’t worth it. She still has the defunct technology in her left eye. It shut down unexpectedly, the company still worked on the tech, yet could not repair it. She now has a defunct neurological device in her head that is supposedly unrepairable and the risk of removing it might outweigh the risk of keeping it. Isn't it terrifying as is? Now to add to the insult, the company that made it shifted to something else, so if it starts causing any troubles, there will be no-one to provide expertise to help assess the risk. It reinforces the main story quite a bit: there is enough risk and complexity as is, regardless the company going out of business.