4 ms·

I work in medical devices and when I read such stories I often wonder how quickly we could develop things if we reexamined the company processes that have been

I work in medical devices and when I read such stories I often wonder how quickly we could develop things if we reexamined the company processes that have been developed over the last 30 years. Maybe everything we do is fine, but I suspect we do a lot of stuff very inefficiently.

SoftTalker 2y ago
Life-critical devices are generally subject to a lot of regulations. Regulations that were in many cases written in blood. However I suspect you're correct that there isn't much periodic, retrospective review of these regulations and whether they still make sense or can be simplified. Especially when there are overlapping or possibly contradictory regulations. We know what wide-open unregulated markets result in when lives are at stake. It would be nice to think that engineers and executives would never sacrifice human life for profit, but we know that some of them will. I also think about all the advice I read on this forum to "raise your rates" and "charge based on the value you deliver, not what your costs are." But when physical engineering companies take this approach, it's somehow just greed or complacency. Of course any potential client can just decide to hire their own staff and do the job in-house if your quote is viewed as unreasonable.
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  > We know what wide-open unregulated markets result in when lives are at stake. We know much more about what happens with regulation: prohibitively expensive nuclear power and unbearably slow progress in simple medical devices. Opportunity cost is enormous here. > It would be nice to think that engineers and executives would never sacrifice human life for profit, but we know that some of them will. This is really simplistic. We wouldn't use anything if it cost what it cost to make it 100% safe. Everything has risks and prices.
  - rqtwteye 2y ago
    We also know what happens without any regulation: milk with lead added to make it look white, cars that kill their passengers when crashing, polluted rivers, polluted air and much more. We certainly need to constantly revisit things but without regulations our society wouldn’t be fun to live in.
    - robertlagrant 2y ago
      It's good that we no longer have cars that kill their passengers or polluted rivers or polluted air, I suppose. See what I mean? What's the point of misinterpreting? No one is ever saying "zero regulations are best". There are hundreds of thousands of regulations. Because there are so many, lots of them are not great or constrictive, and we never got to the world where the US is powered by 1990 by majority nuclear power, and the following developing China followed suit, and businesses sprang up there to roll out the same technologies worldwide, and we had far, far less climate change.
      - rqtwteye 2y ago
        Seems we are in agreement. Regulations are necessary but need to be well thought out because there is a risk of over regulating
- EricE 2y ago
  >We know what wide-open unregulated markets result in when lives are at stake. Death is bad for business? I dunno why this myth that without government life would be a deadly hellscape seems to persist.
  - lainga 2y ago
    Sunk-tax fallacy.
  - schiffern 2y ago
    If we're talking wide-open unregulated markets, that's pretty obvious. It just comes from experience. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fi... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/jan/06/bp-oil-spill-deepwater-horizon https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/jan/06/bp-oil-s... etc etc
  - bell-cot 2y ago
    > I dunno why this myth that without government ... /s? (Look at the quality of life in failing/failed states, where there's effectively no government. Libertarian paradises are extremely rare; deadly hellscapes are all too common.)
eastbound 2y ago
Yes but certification!!! More seriously, I wonder as a human species if we’ll evolve beyond certification being the only way to prove a work was done properly. I suspect the civilization who does that will save an order of magnitude more human workers.

SoftTalker 2y ago

Life-critical devices are generally subject to a lot of regulations. Regulations that were in many cases written in blood. However I suspect you're correct that there isn't much periodic, retrospective review of these regulations and whether they still make sense or can be simplified. Especially when there are overlapping or possibly contradictory regulations. We know what wide-open unregulated markets result in when lives are at stake. It would be nice to think that engineers and executives would never sacrifice human life for profit, but we know that some of them will. I also think about all the advice I read on this forum to "raise your rates" and "charge based on the value you deliver, not what your costs are." But when physical engineering companies take this approach, it's somehow just greed or complacency. Of course any potential client can just decide to hire their own staff and do the job in-house if your quote is viewed as unreasonable.

robertlagrant 2y ago
> We know what wide-open unregulated markets result in when lives are at stake. We know much more about what happens with regulation: prohibitively expensive nuclear power and unbearably slow progress in simple medical devices. Opportunity cost is enormous here. > It would be nice to think that engineers and executives would never sacrifice human life for profit, but we know that some of them will. This is really simplistic. We wouldn't use anything if it cost what it cost to make it 100% safe. Everything has risks and prices.
- rqtwteye 2y ago
  We also know what happens without any regulation: milk with lead added to make it look white, cars that kill their passengers when crashing, polluted rivers, polluted air and much more. We certainly need to constantly revisit things but without regulations our society wouldn’t be fun to live in.
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    It's good that we no longer have cars that kill their passengers or polluted rivers or polluted air, I suppose. See what I mean? What's the point of misinterpreting? No one is ever saying "zero regulations are best". There are hundreds of thousands of regulations. Because there are so many, lots of them are not great or constrictive, and we never got to the world where the US is powered by 1990 by majority nuclear power, and the following developing China followed suit, and businesses sprang up there to roll out the same technologies worldwide, and we had far, far less climate change.
    - rqtwteye 2y ago
      Seems we are in agreement. Regulations are necessary but need to be well thought out because there is a risk of over regulating
EricE 2y ago
>We know what wide-open unregulated markets result in when lives are at stake. Death is bad for business? I dunno why this myth that without government life would be a deadly hellscape seems to persist.
- lainga 2y ago
  Sunk-tax fallacy.
- schiffern 2y ago
  If we're talking wide-open unregulated markets, that's pretty obvious. It just comes from experience. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fi... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/jan/06/bp-oil-spill-deepwater-horizon https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/jan/06/bp-oil-s... etc etc
- bell-cot 2y ago
  > I dunno why this myth that without government ... /s? (Look at the quality of life in failing/failed states, where there's effectively no government. Libertarian paradises are extremely rare; deadly hellscapes are all too common.)

eastbound 2y ago

Yes but certification!!! More seriously, I wonder as a human species if we’ll evolve beyond certification being the only way to prove a work was done properly. I suspect the civilization who does that will save an order of magnitude more human workers.