Re: [libreplanet-discuss] Why medical technology often doesn't make it from drawing board to hospital

[Mary-Anne Wolf]

I think it is a question of rewards and prestige and power.  The hospital's customer is not the patient but the insurance company, who pays the money.  While hospitals may be rewarded for better results, the hospital decision makers are more often stronger in their expertise in medicine than in their expertise about technology.  There are exceptions; Children's Hospital in Boston is a well known example, whose leadership has expertise in both technology and medicine.  The highest prestige jobs in a hospital are typically positions held by people with M.D.s.   The pressure to contain costs is formidable, and while better software can indeed improve results in some cases, the people who make decisions in a hospital will typically not have the right expertise to recognize when and how that happens.  While they understand that some things require technology, and may choose to invest in sufficient technology to make certain kinds of treatments possible, they may not have the nuanced appreciation of the difference between better and worse software, as most of us on this list would understand.  Similarly, researchers supported by grants are rewarded for showing that something new is possible, rather than for repeating the same discovery but making it more easy or smooth or reliable.  That is the nature of how grant worthiness is judged.  While there are grants specifically aimed at bringing research results into routine clinical use, they don't force the researchers to look at software quality, and the people who judge which teams get these grants may or may not even understand where and how the maturity of the software fits into making research more clinically useful.  It may not be their expertise either.

On February 18, 2017 at 7:59 AM Thomas Harding <tom@thomas-harding.name> wrote:

Why hospital doesn't fund computing researchers / research centers to make their tools usable daily in an hospital, instead of waiting for private/commercial compaignies/corporations to integrate it, most likely in a complete new(again) very costly equipment and not as an upgrade or maintainance?

Le 16 février 2017 12:33:42 GMT+01:00, David Hirst <david@davidhirst.com> a écrit :

Why medical technology often doesn’t make it from drawing board to hospital

 

 

https://theconversation.com/why-medical-technology-often-doesnt-make-it-from-drawing-board-to-hospital-72981

 

 

This article, published under a cc licence, so freely available, criticises “free” software and not providing incentives to make it robust enough and easy enough for clinical use. The conversation is not peer-reviewed, but is a voice for academics, who are used to peer scrutiny.

 

 

I do not know the field, but I can see that there is huge scope for tools to help visualisation of scans that might make them easier to interpret.

 

 

But I suspect it is a bit naïve to blame “incentives”, and it sounds a bit neolib to me. But somebody more expert in the area may have better grounds for comment.

 

 

The article can have comments made about it, and I think you can be confident that the author will see them and respond.

 

 

Regards

 

 

David

 

 

David Hirst

 

 

Mobile:  +44 7831 405443

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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