Promising
Gadget : Promising theguardian.com... - National Migraine...
Gadget
Written by
Brychni
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6 Replies
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I note - from the USA:
The approximate cost of gammaCore is $598 per month, according to electroCore’s customer support team, and can only be purchased, refilled, reloaded, or recharged with a prescription. Each charge is estimated to last approximately 31 days.
uspharmacist.com/article/ga...
It is difficult to believe that it is, electronically, more sophisticated than a modern smart phone. Which makes the price very much in the eye-watering arena. From a UK perspective, I hope that the NHS has not agreed such a high price. (I know of many who are refused medicines because of their costs.) Largely so that everyone who would benefit gets the opportunity to have one.
Smart phones are produced in vast quantities so benefit from the cheaper manufacturing costs associated with high volume production. Plus these products don't have to go through the stringent medical qualifications that are expected from medical devises, development costs more and the profit margins are much smaller because they just don't produce anything like the quantities.
Of course there is a development cost. Of course there is the medical device licence issue.
But such a device can exploit things like the basic components of a mobile phone - processor, memory, screen, LEDs, batteries - as well as the manufacturing processes developed for mobile phones. And there are many medical devices available at much more modest prices ranging from pulse-oximeters, through to active devices like TENS machines.
My previous mobile phone lasted about six years - and was sold onwards. At the price I quoted, that would be $43,056 per patient. Just 23,000 or so devices would rake in a billion dollars.
Assuming a rate of one sufferer in 1,000 adults, there would be around 200,000 potential users in the USA.
The problem being that with such high prices, sales will be restricted. People will be refused the device because of that. Whereas if the price were commensurate with the apparent technology input, they could be provided to most sufferers in the developed world and, possibly, further afield as well.
I don't know that is a crazy amount who knows if the NHS can cover that. My husband works for a company that produce medical devices, they plough through millions in development. Without attracting returns for hedge fund managers etc they're dead in the water. Each quarter they have to gain more and more in funding to even get close to market. It's a risky business.
Pulse-oximeters and tens machines are high volume machines and are not very sophisticated devices. For every product that gets to market there are many that dont make it, with millions being written off. That said if there wasn't money to be made these devices and research would have to be funded by governments and I can't see that happening.
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