I was very excited to read today from Springwise about a mobile phone based ultrasound device selling in the “just under $8,000 range”. It was developed for “the developing world” in terms of their needs.
I think that is a marketing mistake. I think this should be for “every world”.
Right now we are fixated in our health care world at getting a bigger/better MRI or bigger/better whatever diagnostic tool is under scrutiny. These product enhancements are based on two flawed thoughts
- there is infinite flexibility in pricing of medical services
- that knowing about smaller and smaller medical “things” will improve people’s health
Pricing should be encouraged to go down. Diagnostic tools which cost less should be what insurers and governments are supporting. According eHow this morning MRI machines cost $300,000 for extremity only and $1,000,000 to $3,000,000 for broad range capability. $8,000 gets a lot of the work done! YES develop for Docs in remote villages, but YES develop for Docs in Manhattan. We don’t need million dollar machines everywhere – send people who have been pre-screened to those machines with more delicate or challenging images. Bring down the cost of an average visit!
As for screening smaller and smaller things for diagnostic information? Its good, and vital in some instances. However, we all know of someone we know, love, and care for who is challenged with a health situation but who also perhaps smokes, eats to much, or hasn’t worked out in a long time. The biggest opportunity for marketers is to make salads, yoga classes, and general healthy living sexy and desireable. We live that way, we as a population get healthy.
It is both ironic and fabulously encouraging to discover that C.K. Prahalad’s most enduring legacy of “The Botton of the Pyramid” may not be just that by doing so you can raise standards of living in poorer areas, but that the creativity and innovation developed and applied to a “wealthy nation” serves an equally impactful good.
