Vietnam Medic Makes Homemade Endoscope

Davian writes "As reported by the BBC a Vietnamese doctor has managed to create an endoscope using an apparatus consisting of lenses and a webcam, linked to a Pentium 4. Total cost of extra hardware - less than $1000." The doctor plans to also assist other local hospitals that are facing similar budgetary contraints.

Re:Ehh?

[torpor]

read the article. the only thing they 'bought' was the scope itself, which cost $800 .. i'm sure you can read between the lines on that one.

Re:Safety and health

[Scaz7]

Read the article,

All he purchased was the scope, the only thing he did was attach it to a webcam and a pc,

Read outside the box and you might learn something

Not very surprising

[Lonewolf666]

I'm working in the medical device business, and a large part of our expenses is for stuff like clinical studies, documentation to comply with FDA regulations and such. Also, the relatively low numbers tend to make manufacturing more expensive than for mass-manufactured stuff.

Last but not least, the market seems to readily accept the high prices manufacturers are demanding. In fact, an ex-colleague told me a story about a surgical instrument that failed in the market because of a too low price. Doctors did not trust that "cheapshit" stuff. After a rebranding and raising of the price, the same instrument did fine in the market. Expect management to happily take advantage of such thinking.

Overall, I'm not surprised that a professional endoscope costs 30.000, even if something almost (I suspect Dr Nguyen Phuoc Huy made a few compromises in the used materials) equivalent can be built at 1000 in materials.

Re:Pah...

[mikael]

Part of the cost is caused by the need to take out insurance in case of a malpractice lawsuit, and to carry out usability and safety tests. You don't want to have to liquidate the entire company simply because some technician left his coffee cup on a floppy disk which led to the contents of the disk to be corrupted, leading to a missed diagnosis, and ultimately leading to the untimely death of an octogenarian.

But a similar thing happened in Iraq. US Marines put together a water well inspection system out of a webcam, a torch, some rope and USB extension cables. Six months later a defence company comes out with the offical "military standard" version at around $100K per unit.

Link to audio stream

[Stalky]

The Go Digital program that this appeared in is still available on the BBC's servers. The endoscope bit starts at 17 minutes into the stream [bbc.co.uk].

Re:I wonder how surgically sterile...

[martalli]

Endoscopes are sterilized by keeping them in a chemical bath. Cidex OPA (ortho-phthalaldehyde) is the primary chemical used. Here is a CDC paper about the issue for anyone interested: http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol7no2/rutala.htm [cdc.gov].

The camera, comnputer, etc don't need to be sterilized.

Re:Ouch

[jma05]

The $800 scope (the major component of his $1000) is what he is pushing inside, not the webcam, which is the same thing you push inside with an expensive commercially made equipment. The 'scope' is basically a tiny lens on an optic fibre.

What he changed is all of the system that does not go into the human body.