Why Are Medical Ultrasound Systems So Inexpensive?

Interesting that they are selling the hardware as a subscription, although they also seem to offer it for actual you-really-own-it purchase, but I couldn't find the price for that: probably the equivalent of three years of monthly fees, so around USD 7k, maybe a 25% discount to be competitive, so USD 5.5k for the hardware plus the app/support/whatever. It certainly isn't five grand of electronics though. I'm assuming from the looks and size of the device that its just the transducer and an ADC/DAC streaming to/from USB, so based on the earlier HN article perhaps less than USD 1k for it if you were to try and build the thing yourself?

> A subscription or outright purchase includes a Lumify transducer, the cloud-enabled Lumify Android ultrasound app, software upgrades, manufacturer's warranty, and access to Philips service and education

Sadly it only seems to be available in the USA. I'd love to have my very own device that lets me look inside myself; a paltry two hundred bucks seems pretty reasonable! I think you'd get bored looking at your spleen after a month, although I wonder if drunken 'let's look inside Bob's lower intestine' (can you do that?) moments in the pub might never get old... Also great for checking if the toddler really put that marble up his nose, or checking the progress of the priceless gold C3-P0 LEGO minifig he/your dog ate.

It even does doppler imaging, so you can watch blood flow in your veins - the first time I saw this demonstrated on me in hospital I was amazed, it's pretty cool. One thing it does is colour the flows red or blue, depending on direction, but interestingly since it has no idea which is really an artery and which a vein, the doctor has to decide visually and flip the colours if appropriate.