41–50 of 135 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> All the same, I sleep like 10x better, so I suppose that considering that $600 is a cheap price to pay. First time? Price is not determined by cost to produce. It’s determined by the price a customer is willing to pay.
Every company operating on that basis is a busniess waiting to be disrupted by a cost-plus competitor.
Tangential, but I have sleep apnea. Fortunately I have it mild enough to get away with a mouthpiece instead of a CPAP (which is good anyway because I also have bruxism). The mouthpiece works great and I would recommend everyone get tested for sleep apnea if your insurance covers it, but I have to admit that paying for it bothered me. Even with insurance covering some of it, it cost me about $600. I know that there's…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> All the same, I sleep like 10x better, so I suppose that considering that $600 is a cheap price to pay. First time? Price is not determined by cost to produce. It’s determined by the price a customer is willing to pay.
Every company operating on that basis is a busniess waiting to be disrupted by a cost-plus competitor.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is definitely not that simple for a number of reasons. Yes, aligners and retainers in theory may be printed on some commercially available hardware. At your own risk, because you will be printing a medical device and you will need: 1. A treatment plan: simulated movement of teeth at every step, taking into account all forces. That’s specialized software or external lab service. 2. Precision. You put too much press…
How many of these risks and problems are exaggerated in scope and potential due to both a desire for a regulatory moat and a general fear of litigation in the medical space? That is to say, how good is “good enough” when done at small-scale in developing nations or medically underserved communities?
2. Let‘s say the practice does it in old way, with impressions - no intraoral scanner. The scanner of impressions still needed, but it can be cheaper. Someone needs to build it and achieve required accuracy (let’s say, 50 μm). Who? Why? Failure mode: bad scan leads to aligners not fitting your teeth from day 1. Oops.
3. Let‘s say someone builds a good OSS alternative to OrthoCAD (Who? Why?), so that orthodontist on site could build a treatment plan and export it into series of 3D models for printers. Failure mode: good treatment plans are rarely possible or output is garbage (aligners do not fit, cause pain etc)
4. Maybe some company develops good plastic or patent expires, so that it is possible to produce it in India, China or other inexpensive location with strong industrial base. That would be cool, otherwise: non-compliant plastic breaks in patient’s mouth, decomposes with patient ingesting some toxic chemicals or is simply not strong enough to move teeth in desired position, so you have problem with 2nd aligner.
5. Maybe you get to this point, but you still need a printer that can maintain the same precision in printing. And you need a good cutting and finishing process. Someone needs to build such device. Failure modes are similar to the mentioned above.
6. The ortho supervision sounds easy, but how many patients in developing countries do even have a possibility to see orthodontist? They are definitely not in position to treat themselves.
So, in this process, what is good enough exactly? Who and why would drive the costs down while building an on-site solution?
Tangential, but I have sleep apnea. Fortunately I have it mild enough to get away with a mouthpiece instead of a CPAP (which is good anyway because I also have bruxism). The mouthpiece works great and I would recommend everyone get tested for sleep apnea if your insurance covers it, but I have to admit that paying for it bothered me. Even with insurance covering some of it, it cost me about $600. I know that there's…
I’ve tried custom molded mouthpieces for grinding but couldn’t adjust to sleep with them. I notice them and feel the discomfort of it not feeling natural despite it being a pricey professionally manufactured piece. It just feels too artificial. I also wonder about the long term effects of polymers in the mouth for long periods of time daily.
I agree the plastics might be bad for me, but I justify it because I suspect that just continuing with the apnea is almost certainly worse for me, considering how many diseases appear to be caused by it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I did Invisalign a few years ago. Manufacturing the retainers is surely only a small part of the puzzle. They used a specialized sort of 3D camera on a stick to get an incredibly accurate model of my mouth, any open source solution would need an equivalent. And you’d also need open source code from somewhere to work out which teeth need to move where and at what stage in the treatment.
>They used a specialized sort of 3D camera on a stick to get an incredibly accurate model of my mouth AFAIK Align's 3D scanning system is more or less branched from the same Israeli tech that went into the Xbox 360 kinect camera and the iPhone face-ID.
iTero scanners (owned by Align Technology) use parallel confocal imaging via red light lasers. Their newer models also use Multi-Direct Capture techniques.
Kinect used a Light Coding technique, an infrared projector and camera. It was developed by a company called PrimeSense, which was later purchased by Apple.
Tangential, but I have sleep apnea. Fortunately I have it mild enough to get away with a mouthpiece instead of a CPAP (which is good anyway because I also have bruxism). The mouthpiece works great and I would recommend everyone get tested for sleep apnea if your insurance covers it, but I have to admit that paying for it bothered me. Even with insurance covering some of it, it cost me about $600. I know that there's…
> All the same, I sleep like 10x better, so I suppose that considering that $600 is a cheap price to pay. First time? Price is not determined by cost to produce. It’s determined by the price a customer is willing to pay.
So shouldn't this really be something that could be opened sourced. I think I've seen a few write ups of people that did their own, but seems like a highly functional implementation could be democratized.
It’s been tried, with some success. Pretty sure I’ve seen a post here on HN from someone that DIy’d it end to end. But it’s also something that’s not responsible to shortcut. Shifting teeth around too fast can result in permanent root damage and even loss of teeth. There was a whole cottage industry in the US for a while focused on under cutting Invisalign with a reverse-engineered product, but they often moved on ac…
Also who’s attaching the attachments (I had 13 at first) to the teeth to help the aligners grab hold?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> All the same, I sleep like 10x better, so I suppose that considering that $600 is a cheap price to pay. First time? Price is not determined by cost to produce. It’s determined by the price a customer is willing to pay.
Every company operating on that basis is a busniess waiting to be disrupted by a cost-plus competitor.
Tangential, but I have sleep apnea. Fortunately I have it mild enough to get away with a mouthpiece instead of a CPAP (which is good anyway because I also have bruxism). The mouthpiece works great and I would recommend everyone get tested for sleep apnea if your insurance covers it, but I have to admit that paying for it bothered me. Even with insurance covering some of it, it cost me about $600. I know that there's…
Well that's pretty close to how much the entire CPAP system would cost depending on the sale.