Are Financial Incentives to Encourage Kid-Sized Medical Devices a Good Idea?
April 24th, 2008 joshua
There is a disturbing report on the prospect of kid-friendly medical devices.
Currently most medical devices are made for adults, and sized accordingly. But often times children could be the needy recipient of a medical device. Doctors are trying to work around the limitations of medical devices too big, but that statement alone carries a risk.
That is a fact doctors are willing to acknowledge, a pediatric patient receiving a rigged, adult device faces great risk. A report from Associated Press cites an example of a titanium plate lodged in a boy’s skull, first implanted to stabilize the skull, it ended up resting on the boy’s brain.
The Bush Administration is offering financial incentives to create medical devices designed for children.
But in that lay many obvious Catch-22s: First, medical device makers repeatedly show they’re more concerned with a bottom line than a flat line, and subjecting children to their suspect oversight of their own industry, seems rather cruel.
The medical device industry has more than enough reason to score on this deal because currently smaller medical device use is limited to treating only rare diseases, so federal approval to widen their use would open a seemingly endless cash stream for these companies already strapped with lawsuits pending from their negligence on adult patients.
Sadly it’s the children who are apparently in need of such devices that must be subjected to either experimental devices or wait for an industry to turn a moral corner. The government should be offering financial incentives to device corporations who promise to increase scrutiny over manufacturing practices, rather than giving benefits which will allow the company to only make more money.
