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A new transducer could dramatically lower the cost of ultrasound scanners

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Re: A new transducer could dramatically lower the cost of ultrasound scanners

#31

Post by zaroth »

21 wrote: post #30
zaroth wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... Stanford Hospital ... The times I’ve used them, the original bill was so outrageous I fumed for days. Insurance paid ~$15K and they billed me for my entire OOP max for the year ($7,500) for a service that cost about $400 tops to provide. Contested the bill and they do a medical review of the coding. They had billed as “intensive care” the administration of a single shot and a standard blood count. They actually…

I was pointing out that grandparent didn't shop around. Convenience always has a cost. And in US, it's always worth asking for the uninsured price too. When you don't use your insurance, the medical providers compete against themselves and you get market price. Of course, insurance tries very hard to prevent you from bypassing them.

Completely agree with you! At the same time, my personal experience is that Stanford Hosptal billing is outright fraudulent.

And they appear to know it, so don’t treat the bill as some final price, it’s actually just the first round offer to take advantage of people who don’t have the time or inclination to fight it.

Re: A new transducer could dramatically lower the cost of ultrasound scanners

#32

Post by 21 »

zaroth wrote: post #31
21 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was pointing out that grandparent didn't shop around. Convenience always has a cost. And in US, it's always worth asking for the uninsured price too. When you don't use your insurance, the medical providers compete against themselves and you get market price. Of course, insurance tries very hard to prevent you from bypassing them.

Completely agree with you! At the same time, my personal experience is that Stanford Hosptal billing is outright fraudulent. And they appear to know it, so don’t treat the bill as some final price, it’s actually just the first round offer to take advantage of people who don’t have the time or inclination to fight it.

It seems you are right. Must be one of those bay area perks :)

> Stanford Hospital and Clinics in Palo Alto and Sutter Medical Center in Sacramento are two of the most profitable U.S. hospitals, yet both hospitals carry the “nonprofit” designation, according to a new study.

> The most profitable hospitals had the highest patient care markup rate, the authors found.

https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/05/03/nonprofit-stanf...

Re: A new transducer could dramatically lower the cost of ultrasound scanners

#34

Post by jessaustin »

noddy1 wrote: post #11
dairychris wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would too, for the same reason and for other “paravet” diagnostic work on my unit. That said, in cattle I found (with a bit of vet coaching) it wasn’t hard to recognise follicles, distinguish from (and gauge size of) a corpus luteum, etc by manual palpation, at least for someone who AIs reasonably regularly anyway. Our vets seem no less accurate this way than with their expensive heads-up toy! (I doubt I’m as accur…

you can get chinese vet grade USS machines for ~$500

Have you used these machines? When I have purchased dental equipment from these sources, results have been somewhat hit-or-miss.

Re: A new transducer could dramatically lower the cost of ultrasound scanners

#35

Post by jurassic »

zaroth wrote: post #31
21 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was pointing out that grandparent didn't shop around. Convenience always has a cost. And in US, it's always worth asking for the uninsured price too. When you don't use your insurance, the medical providers compete against themselves and you get market price. Of course, insurance tries very hard to prevent you from bypassing them.

Completely agree with you! At the same time, my personal experience is that Stanford Hosptal billing is outright fraudulent. And they appear to know it, so don’t treat the bill as some final price, it’s actually just the first round offer to take advantage of people who don’t have the time or inclination to fight it.

Agreed. I would have shopped around if I knew this was going to be a major expense. My gyno referred me for this to follow up some questions after my annual exam and he was very nonchalant about it. I had never had an ultrasound, but I thought it seemed like a no-big-deal kind of thing on the level of a dental x-ray, especially since I have pretty good insurance, and that casualness was matched by the doctor's attitude. Nobody showed me a bill or price until I was waiting with a full bladder, ready to be scanned.

Re: A new transducer could dramatically lower the cost of ultrasound scanners

#36

Post by azinman2 »

xiphias2 wrote: post #7

Paired with deep learning it would be very helpful for early tumor screening at home. My girlfriend already had cancer twice, but the usual screening is done only once every 6 months.

Overscreening/overtreating is a problem. We all have tumors growing all the time, but our immune systems fight them off.

https://www.mdedge.com/fedprac/avaho/article/98510/oncology/...

Re: A new transducer could dramatically lower the cost of ultrasound scanners

#37

Post by madengr »

namibj wrote: post #23
snops wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moore's law will take care of the processing cost nicely, especially as more commodity processors become powerful enough to handle it. The ADCs and other analog stuff might be more of a hurdle, the design of them is quite hard, they aren't able to take advantages of smaller transistors as well, and competition in the space is decreasing as semiconductor companies keep merging (e.g. Analog Devices and Linear Technolog…

At these low frequencies very simple oversampling Delta-Sigma ADCs work well, considering the sample rate is in the low 3-digit MHz range at most, which can easily be processed by even an 15$ FPGA that has SerDes suitable for USB3 or PCIe2 [0]. Considering you can just shift the noise out of the frequency of your ultrasound with the correct averaging filter in the FPGA to convert the 1-bit high sample rate to many-bi…

The clock jitter may get you. You can oversample and decimate to obtain the equivalent ENOB, but then the sample clock stability becomes more difficult and costly.

Re: A new transducer could dramatically lower the cost of ultrasound scanners

#38

Post by madengr »

jurassic wrote: post #14

I hope this reaches hospitals and patients soon. I recently had to pay ~$1k for a transvaginal ultrasound at Stanford Hospital. That is what I paid AFTER insurance, I think the hospital billed the insurance company another $5k or so. Absolute highway robbery, and prohibitive for many people in need of these assessments.

My wife had one of those “fun scans” when pregnant. That cost $150, lasted 45 minutes, and the machine (color 3D) was way more advanced than the diagnostic machine. The that was not a rip off.

Call it a medical procedure, and run it through a radiologist, and the cost shoots up 10x minimum. So where is all the money going?

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