FreePulse Patient Monitor a low-cost patient monitor for use in developing world

I think Healthcare device experimentation will move outside OECD, just because of the high-safety and high-precision requirements.

Would you rather third world countries have no medicine than medicine that doesn't check all the FDA's (mostly pointless) little boxes?

And yes, medical equipment in the US is absurdly overpriced due to extreme overregulation.

Hey adrianN, creator of the project here. "For use in developing world environments" means built to perform to hospital specifications but without the cost markup or over-the-top complexity of a developed world piece of equipment. I've spent about four months working in hospitals in Rwanda and Nepal fixing donated "developed world" medical devices, and the fact of the matter is that 35% break within a year of donation and 95% within 5 years. This project is built so that it is easily maintainable, easily repairable, works out-of-the-box, and is at a price point that developing world hospitals can afford to purchase with their budgets (~200-300 USD, according to my sources in Rwanda). Also, most developing world hospitals have a very high nurse turnover rate, making it critical to make the device simple enough to be used by staff who haven't been trained yet.

Hey! Sorry about the lack of material on the blog, I set it up about last week so I haven't had a chance to post too much yet. The code for the project is open source, hosted at https://github.com/ReeceStevens/patient-monitor. Look for a new blog post coming up this week with a lot more background about the project. I also have blogged about my work in developing world hospitals that led up to this project; that info is at http://www.reecestevens.svbtle.com.

Hey jrnichols! The device measures 3-lead ECG and has semi-automatic NIBP; the user pumps the cuff up to max pressure with a hand pump, but the pressure is measured and released automatically by the device.