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Tremor-cancelling spoon for Parkinson's tremors

liftlabsdesign.com

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Re: Tremor-cancelling spoon for Parkinson's tremors

#51

Post by wisty »

logicallee wrote: post #3

Let's entertain the notion, prevalent here, that this idea itself (like all ideas themselves) is worth absolutely nothing, and that any one of the teams in the world who have access to gyroscopes, servos, and microchips, should have the right to reproduce this hack at unit cost and drive these guys out of business. Its cost is listed at $295.00[1] and this is their only product. It's huge compared to what the best fa…

It's a highly regulated device. It's not going to be cheap, even without patents. Just look at hearing aids.

Let's say they didn't have a patent.

You'd need a significant investment, so you couldn't produce it at unit cost.

There's development. A good engineer costs what ... 200k? Including stuff like taxes, overhead, etc. Let's say you need several (because there's the control systems, hardware design, casing, manufacture, etc). You'll need supplies.

Then you'll need testing, legal, etc. You'll need to set up manufacturing (China? A US shop? Let's assume you're not building your own plant).

Complete ass-pull guess - it's $10 million to bring a clone to market, in the US. It's a medical assistive device (is that the right term?) - you can't do it cheaply and legally.

So there's ~600k (~1/500) people in the US with Parkinsons. Maybe 10% want your spoon (because there's other spoons, or some have treatment that makes your spoon useless, or they are too stubborn to use it, or they just don't want it). That's 60k.

So you're looking at maybe $160 overhead per unit. Add $50 sales cost, and $50 to manufacture it (medical device), and you're not looking at a cheap spoon.

Yes, going international could make it cheaper. Presumably, the company selling this spoon will also get cheaper with time.

I'm also sure that even with patents, there will be clones. People will come up with similar ideas, and make them just different enough to squeak past, legally speaking. But given the high costs of developing assistive devices, it's not going to be profitable for every man and his dog to make a clone. So you'll go from a monopoly to a near-monopoly. Just because there's some competition doesn't mean that the price will dramatically drop - you need a lot of competition with identical products for the price to go to unit cost.

Re: Tremor-cancelling spoon for Parkinson's tremors

#53

Post by gone35 »

gottebp wrote: post #42

I'm a little late commenting, but I developed a Windows app [1] that does exactly this for the mouse. It basically applies some fancy FIR filters to the x and y deltas. [1] www.steadymouse.com

Wonderful; like OS X's "Slow Keys" but for the mouse pointer instead. This should be included as a built-in accessibility option in every operating system.

Have you thought about open-sourcing your implementation to encourage others to take a jab at it and port it to other platforms?

Re: Tremor-cancelling spoon for Parkinson's tremors

#54

Post by stan_rogers »

caycep wrote: post #8

This is interesting, but IMHO, will not be as useful in most cases of Parkinson's disease. 1) Parkinsonian tremor is typically at rest or with distraction. When you actually engage in purposeful action, such as using a spoon, the tremor usually dampens or goes away. 2) The main problem in Parkinson's is actually "bradykinesia" or slowness of movement. A more accurate term, in my opinion, is slowness of motor planning…

I'm part of that small subset (there is intentional tremor, which actually made a Parkinsonism diagnosis a bit of a bitch).

That's not a rebuttal; the device would be far more useful for essential tremor or Huntington's-like disease sufferer's than it would be for the ordinary Parkinson's sufferer. (For some value of "ordinary", which is hard to come by in the Parkinson's world. Among my peer group - people I've actually met through neurologists, support services, and so forth - there have been a relatively small number of people who have a textbook presentation. But intentional tremor is not a frequent symptom.) The spoon (and similar devices) would be absolutely transformative for some people's quality of life, but putting the "Parkinson's" label on it won't get it into the right hands.

Re: Tremor-cancelling spoon for Parkinson's tremors

#55

Post by tonylemesmer »

jmadsen wrote: post #45

This is wonderful! I have to wonder - why is it that it took so long to come up with such a simple idea for such an obvious problem? I'd like to blame it on the "get rich, web app startup" mentality, but really, that's a fairly recent thing. Perhaps this is a harder problem than it seems? Or is it true that all our new inventors are chasing riches?

It is wonderful isn't it?

My opinion as a biomedical engineer is that there is a lack of exposure of these real problems because, really, how many people know someone with Parkinsons? But when companies like this solve them in such an elegant way they can appear pretty cool and dare I say "sexy".

So its an obvious solution, but I wouldn't say its an obvious problem. The list of problems is probably huge and a forum for capable engineers and designers to browse and help solve them would be awesome.

Re: Tremor-cancelling spoon for Parkinson's tremors

#57

Post by jmadsen »

tonylemesmer wrote: post #55
jmadsen wrote: post #45

This is wonderful! I have to wonder - why is it that it took so long to come up with such a simple idea for such an obvious problem? I'd like to blame it on the "get rich, web app startup" mentality, but really, that's a fairly recent thing. Perhaps this is a harder problem than it seems? Or is it true that all our new inventors are chasing riches?

It is wonderful isn't it? My opinion as a biomedical engineer is that there is a lack of exposure of these real problems because, really, how many people know someone with Parkinsons? But when companies like this solve them in such an elegant way they can appear pretty cool and dare I say "sexy". So its an obvious solution, but I wouldn't say its an obvious problem. The list of problems is probably huge and a forum f…

" forum for capable engineers and designers to browse and help solve them would be awesome."

That is an awesome idea - it seems like I've seen/heard of something similar, but if not, I'm a web programmer who could bang that together rather quickly.

Before I do, has anyone heard of an existing site/forum?

Re: Tremor-cancelling spoon for Parkinson's tremors

#58

Post by logicallee »

throwawaytremor wrote: post #46
logicallee wrote: post #30

I made a point about the importance of patents for this invention, but it is better to receive it straight from the source: http://imgur.com/Q99L8V3 (the bottom just quotes my letter, already visible) This product and company would not exist without patents on what amounts to an idea.

Huh? All your e-mail exchange proves is that he believed, at one point, patents were a good idea. In fact, it doesn't even prove that: If a stranger approached me about my company's patents, you can bet I'd smile and nod say, "Yes, they're important", like he did -- regardless of what I actually believe. Establishing a written record of anything else sounds like a great way to throw that investment -- valuable or not…

Of course the email isn't meant to prove anything, I was just curious how long his development time took. I only asked about the length of time of development, nothing else, he volunteered the extra information, which is that he would not have been able to raise any money without them (including what sounds like a research grant) and that it was crucial to getting to market at all (or whatever he said).

As it's all in the past, I don't see that this would help his patent case today in any way. ("Please uphold the patent, because I really needed it back when it was just an idea" doesn't seem a convincing reason to uphold a patent today, as they are now on the market.)

So I read the information he volunteered as stemming from his experience and perspective, rather than his interests.

I also see projects fail completely every day which could have succeeded with a minimum level of patent protection on their narrow inventions. So there may be a built-in survival bias, and you will not necessarily hear about these projects, which fail to raise even a preseed research grant "round" to complete development, but are abandoned isntead.

Page Rank was also patented by Larry Page. In stark contrast to the view presented on Hacker News, ideas are extremely worthwhile and patents are one of the most important tools any entrepreneur has for getting to market with real innovation, which is unsure and costly, and requires people to buy in at a pre-revenue stage.

The mechanism patents due this via is a full monopoly for a limited time. We can see this in the price set on this invention (that we're discussing), which is a monopoly price and will be upheld due to the fact that competitors are not allowed in the same space.

In countries that do not acknowledge these patents, a $79 equivalent could appear shortly. It can even be objectively better. Nevertheless, this is the price we pay for this invention to exist at all, and but for the patent system this invention would not exist at all. (In reality.)

Re: Tremor-cancelling spoon for Parkinson's tremors

#59

Post by TeMPOraL »

smtddr wrote: post #29
TeMPOraL wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tear everything to shreds. That's also called "constructive feedback" or "having something useful to say". OP offered his thoughts on the best cases where this technology could be applied while explaining how Parkinson actually works and how this limits the usefulness of this solution. If this is "such an HN reply", then this is also the kind of reply for which I come back to this site.

A small amount of "constructive feedback" drowned out by the excessive pessimism that one can only find in HN comments. Let me also mention that we don't live in a world where everyone can (or even wants to) get brain surgery.

Excessive pessimism? All he said is that this "will not be as useful in most cases of Parkinson's disease" because . For me this is clear thinking, not pessimism. If one is not able to handle this kind of feedback without going emotional, then one most certainly lives in the world of self-induced delusions.

Re: Tremor-cancelling spoon for Parkinson's tremors

#60

Post by TeMPOraL »

gfosco wrote: post #25
TeMPOraL wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tear everything to shreds. That's also called "constructive feedback" or "having something useful to say". OP offered his thoughts on the best cases where this technology could be applied while explaining how Parkinson actually works and how this limits the usefulness of this solution. If this is "such an HN reply", then this is also the kind of reply for which I come back to this site.

Lets just be clear... He recommended BRAIN SURGERY rather than a simple "hack" spoon.

Well, so what? It seems to be a standard medical practice. It only sounds scary because it's new / we're used to have it sound scary in TV shows.
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