That doctor deserves some serious kudos. I cannot even fathom how grateful those parents must have been for his work after being told by all other doctors that the baby was too small for dialysis. That kind of fuck-you-I-can-make-it-smaller ballsiness is why I am proud to call myself a hacker.
Not to belittle the doctor's work, but the truth is this isn't that hard a hack to imagine. Dialysis is a pretty simple process, done with a diffusion membrane. No doubt what he did was take a membrane intended for a normal machine and size it down with "plumbing" appropriate for the patient.
But then, that's kind of an essential quality of all great hacks, isn't it? They all look straightforward and simple when they're finished.
The very definition of out of the box thinking, no?
I think it's easy to underestimate this. How many times do we hear of something like this. Not often. Most people play the cards they're dealt. He printed a new deck for this girl. This guy is the my-hero type of awesome.
The technical difficulty is almost a side thing I guess. The box is the limitations of the medical profession.
What I think is the interesting part of this is that he did not say: 'not my job' or (more likely) 'I wish that this was someone's job' or ' 'I wish we could do something.' He said 'what needs to be done.
I couldn't see any mention of the time it took to build the device, but I'd hazard a guess that the lifespan of a 6lb baby with failed kidneys could be measured in hours, which would seem to imply that the design was reasonably straightforward.
Not to devalue the doctor's work though. He did save someone's life.
You would think that someone is already manufacturing infant-sized dialysis machiness. Throughout the story they emphasize that NHS has no such machines, never quite saying if hospitals elsewhere have them. Is that because NHS just refuses to buy any?
To clarify, the NHS is a VERY risk averse organisation. And a home-built dialysis machine is a very risky machine to build and use. Well done to the doc.
I think even a risk averse organization would realize that when the options are A) baby will die or B) baby may be hurt by untested machine, option B is clearly better.
Even a very risk-averse person would see B as clearly better, but a risk-averse organization will usually prefer option A.
Nobody gets in trouble for following the rules. Besides, the NHS, as an organization, sees thousands of dead babies a year, why should it care about another?
Risk-averse organizations fall into the same category as people who would decide not to throw the lever, because if they don't take any action, then they aren't responsible for any of the consequences (which is stupid, imo).
Unfortunately, when they might have to shell out millions if the baby dies after using an untested medical device, that's not an easy thing for them to see.
...had to add somethng here as I am a big fan of the NHS.
In an increasingly litigious profession, the doctor must've known the consequences had something gone wrong and acted in spite of those career threatening risks - shows true courage.
I hope (although doubt) this helps to stop the practice of defensive medicine where lawyers' concerns take priority over patients' needs.
Yeah, its a little off topic, but visting a hospital always puts my building a web-application into perspective!
I'm also a fan of the NHS, but also try to recognize where it (like any organisation) fails.
Very courageous, and incredible initiative by the doc! (I can imagine a number of docs thinking about how they could do it, but this guy actually made it happen.)
Fan when we can take care of medical questions quickly and efficiently (yes, it _can_ happen with the NHS), but also critical of some poor experiences we've had.
