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> It's an unfortunate fact of life that life supporting technology can increasingly only be interfaced via smartphones.

Things like "insulin pump control" had separate, non-phone devices for a long time. Consumers flocked to the ones on the phone even when they sucked and had 1/10 the features.

I'm no defender of medical companies, but the blame for your complaint falls squarely on the consumers, themselves.

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I think this strikes me as a revealed preference story. Would you rather carry around an additional device, remember to charge it, etc. else be locked out of lifesaving care? I see the appeal of reducing the number of devices you have to carry around.

I also think for many smaller medical device manufacturers it can be advantageous to build on an existing platform like android/iphone. You're already solving one challenging hardware problem, why add another when you can take advantage of a mature development ecosystem that consumers 1) seem to have a preference for and 2) have already paid for, thus lowering the cost of treatment delivery.

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