If you think it’s annoying when your old mobile phone is no longer supported, read this.
When it comes to medical technology, few developments have a greater “wow” factor than the bionic eye.
While not quite up to the standard of a healthy human eye, these prosthetic implants nevertheless have brought both partial vision and dramatic improvements in life quality to hundreds of formerly blind people.
Which makes the following tale even more breathtakingly “wow”, but for all the wrong reasons. Be warned, this report is about to sorely test whatever remaining faith in the goodness of humanity you might possess.
An investigation by technology magazine IEEE Spectrum has revealed the unedifying saga of a California-based bionic eye manufacturer called Second Sight Medical Products.
The publicly listed company, which was founded in 1998, manufactures visual prosthetic devices. More than 350 people have been implanted Second Sight’s bionic eyes.
Unfortunately, things haven’t been going too swimmingly on the financial front for Second Sight, and a couple of years ago the company came close to bankruptcy.
Which is bad news for investors, but particularly bad news for Second Sight customers who might be rocking one of those visual devices.
It transpires the company decided it couldn’t afford to support its technology any more, so if anything goes wrong with those Second Sight bionic eyes, the customers are literally left in the dark.
The devices, as far as Second Sight is concerned, are obsolete, won’t be repaired or upgraded, and if any technical issues arise (as if that would ever happen), then the likely option for the user is going blind again.
Which is exactly what has happened to one unfortunate Second Sight customer whose device, implanted in her left eye, started beeping as she walked through a New York City subway station (a scary enough experience even for the fully sighted person). She then lost her vision just as she was about to walk down a flight of stairs.
Second Sight, which is in the midst of merger negotiations aimed at staving off financial ruin, says it has no plans to support its bionic eye customers, now nor in the future. From this we deduce that staving off “reputational ruin” is not front of mind for the Second Sight board.
All of which leads us to observe that while having private businesses involved in developing essential health products is all well and good, governments and regulators shouldn’t ignore the ugly downside when things go pear-shaped.
If you see something that flabbers your gast, feel free to share it with felicity@medicalrepublic.com.au
