Technology Leading the Blind

Healthcare is truly a realm that will take just as quickly as it gives with no reason other than "money" or lack thereof. In terms of rules, it's almost like the wild west - fee schedules made by the government are suggestions and hospital systems are not required to follow them, though they expect to be paid something to that extent depending on their Medicaid and/or Medicare contracts. The same thing is true for medicine; just because something costs $5 to make doesn't mean that the companies can't charge $500 for it.

Today's focus is on a prosthetics company known as Second Sight. Second Sight stopped making the Argus II bionic eye more than a year ago to pursue a different prosthetic. Why have they done this? Long story short, it's too expensive for the company to update their technology as the technology for eye implants improves. It's not like a computer where the solution is an offline update; the prosthetic eyes would require additional surgery more than likely in order to have software and hardware upgrades. The prosthetic eye itself was valued at about $150,000 not including the surgery nor the post operative care. The technology includes the eye implant, glasses with a built-in camera and a video processing unit that is attached to the user's waist. The camera on the glasses sends video to the video processing unit that then converts the images to pixels and sends them back to the wearer's glasses. The glasses then send this information wirelessly to an antenna on the outside of the eye. The implanted electrode array behind the retina receives the information and works to stimulate the eye and optic nerve to create artificial vision.

The implant, surgery, and aftercare are all expensive and that's probably what led to the company's decision to discontinue it, though that reason is not entirely clear at this point. You may be wondering what is going to happen to the patients who received the implant. The answer here is that eventually the technology will fail and unless they are lucky enough to find a provider familiar with the technology or something similar, they will return to blindness. While not something common at this point in time, it is something to think about as technology improves if you are ever in the market for a prosthetic.

Beyond the short term, you have to think about the long-term impact of that prosthetic in your life: will it be supported in 10 years? In 20 years? How common is the prosthetic? Will other providers be able to give you care or are you limited to a single company or group of providers? These are the questions one must consider when dealing with technology, because for everything you can get it can just as easily be taken away if it is deemed too expensive to support and becomes obsolete. The more you know.

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