So of course I wrote a letter to Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs. This went out January 11th and was delivered on the morning of the 14th. No answer yet.
Dear Mr. Jacobs:
As a professional blogger I’d normally be posting this letter on my web site but this time I’ll first try a more graceful approach. You see I have a beef with your Qualcomm Tricorder X-Prize and I want you to make some changes.
In 2002 my son Chase died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) at age 73 days. I wrote about it at the time and received great support from the Internet community. My pledge to do something about SIDS manifested itself in a research project that came to involve online friends in Canada, Israel, Japan and Russia as well as the United States.
Our goal was to create a device that would plug into a power outlet. It would identify and wirelessly monitor all mammal life forms in a room, gathering data about whatever babies, dogs, or old people were there, detecting as they entered and left the room and setting off a loud alarm if anyone stopped breathing or their heart rate dropped below a certain threshold. SIDS can’t be cured, you see, but it can be cheated and all that requires is judicious use of a 120 dB alarm to scare the baby back into consciousness. No parental intervention is even required.
Making the product a wall wart meant no batteries needed changing. Making it wireless meant no sensors needed to be attached or removed. It would be a no-brainer, completely plug-and-play.
And we did it.
It took four years but we completed a working prototype. We were going to call it the Tricorder and I even bought the Tricorder domain.
But then we ran out of money, lawyers and medical experts told us there were liability issues, that gaining FDA approval would take years and millions, though why that should be the case for a non-contact device we never understood. By this time, too, I had three young sons and a so-called career to manage so we put the project aside. That was in 2006.
Then last week you announced a $10 million prize seeking almost exactly what we had already built. But your prize rules say I have to pay $5,000 so that 35 months from now you’ll look at the work we have already done.
How stupid is that?
We can claim your prize in 30 days, max, by porting our old code to Android or IOS (our team includes a crack tablet developer who is also an MD and specializes in medical apps). Why shouldn’t we be allowed to? This would give us the funds to finally complete our work and eradicate SIDS. How many lives won’t be saved because of these silly rules?
So please correct this error by changing your prize to allow the immediate recognition of scientific achievement. I’m sure you’d rather succeed earlier than later. The good publicity that will come from a quicker award will be no less sweet. After all, it will have pulled from obscurity technologies that might have been lost forever.
All the best,
Bob Cringely
Hope you win it Bob !
2nd. Darn you Francis!
Eat my dust ! LOL.
Good for you, Bob!
How difficult would it be to incorporate the functionality into an IPhone? If you could have the phone in a room and it has the ability to sound an alarm and call 911, it would certainly have value.
Apple is looking for the next big market and digital medicine is largely untapped at the consumer level.
There’s an app for that!
There’s that 60 GHz radar we had to build, but maybe itt could go in an iPhone case…
I hope that they contact you Bob, I don’t think many people knew that you had completed your SIDS monitor mission. Hopefully you can bring it to market.
We’ll see. My wife is really determined to at least get some visibility for SIDS.
KickStarter this thing and hire people to get it moving.
Amen to that. A kickstarter with the right publicity, and you might get there, Bob. I sure hope you can get this device to market.
In case Qualcomm does not work out, have you thought of alternate routes for saving lives? Countries with easier regulations, selling hardware as a non-medical device that monitors breathing rate, or if all else fails open-sourcing the design so others might carry the torch?
“After all, it will have pulled from obscurity technologies that might have been lost forever.”
The hell with that, the sooner it starts preventing deaths the better.
Ironically, the core technology was developed in the 1980s by the KGB.
Well if the Qualcomm thing doesn’t work out and you don’t attract a swarm of VC’s with truckloads of money from your post, you could always make the thing “Open Source”.
Give it away so families could source the parts, download the software, put it together, and start using it. Mission accomplished.
VCs aren’t attracted to little conditions like SIDS, which kills only 2500 babies per year in the USA. Buy me a drink and I’ll tell you what the Gates Foundation said.
to make it a business case it is not important how many kids die each year, the important question is, how many parents cares enough about their baby, to spend 30 dollars (or what ever the price will be) on making sure their baby is not one of the 2500 babies..
Judging by what my wife and I have just spend on getting ready for our coming child, 30 dollars more would be next to nothing, having spend 3000+ dollars making a room for the baby and getting what ever else a baby need, spending an extra few dollars as a life insurance for the baby would be a very small price to pay, and one I would pay it, in a heart beat, to never have to worry about my kid being one of the kids with SIDS..
It’s not about how many kids have SIDS, it’s about the fact that you will probably not know that your kid have SIDS until it’s to late to monitor it.
Exactly!! Even though the risk is low, the results are catastrophic. It’s called insurance. For a newborn, in these days of hyper-safety, $100 is nothing. Feel glad if it never goes off.
You know what? I’m beginning to think that death doesn’t matter at all to many Americans. 9500 US citizens per year are killed by firearms (in the UK it’s around 45), yet the NRA and like-minded fruitloops tell us that more guns will make things better. I don’t think they care about “better”, all they want is more guns.
I remember a column you wrote about asking for some trivial amount from the Gates Foundation (something like $60,000) for some sort of medical research and being turned down. That’s like asking me for a dollar. Some years ago I was looking at web sites for various foundations, and I got the sense that their attitude was something like, don’t call us and ask for money, we have our own goals for our money, and we don’t need your advice. One of my complaints about the super-rich and their foundations is that they don’t always have the imagination to apply the force of their money to make really big changes, but they have the money and they don’t want help figuring out how to spend it. There could be a lot of people out there with great ideas on how make big differences, but we’ll never know about them.
Could you open source the hardware plans and therefore bypass all that government regulation crap or is the device beyond the capabilities of Makers™ to make?
Why not put this on Kickstarter? Or another crowd funding site? If a watch can raise $10 million certainly this could.
I agree, this sound like a perfect thing for crowd sourced funding.
As far as FDA and regulatory approval, don’t make medical claims. Claim it is only an extra sensitive baby monitor. Let word of mouth amongst parents and the eventual success stories get momentum for it actual use. For both our daughters, we kept our baby monitor up high enough so we could typically hear our them breathing. We didn’t have medical reasons, but we were just paranoid parents. Get the product out there and give parents a chance to use it, the rest will follow even if the FDA stamp isn’t there.
Given that they use low intensity millimeter waves (in the frequency range this thing works) for medical treatments for various diseases (EHF therapy), having an EHF transmitter in a room a few meters away from people for many hours per day might prick the ears of at last a few government agencies…
Open sourcing would work, but selling fully built and tested devices commercially is risky, and likely not possible without various approvals.
FYI: Anyone who works near an automatic door has a millimeter wave transmitter near them, typically in the 7-10GHz range.
+1 – I think doing a KickStarter would be a great idea. You already have a working prototype (as needed for KickStarter’s TOS). All you need to do is package it up and sell millions of them.
I agree with Andrew – market it as a specialized Baby Monitor. If you know the cost to go through FDA, you could put that in the comments of KickStarter as bonus goal.
Kickstarter, Crowd Fund it, however if monetary gain is not the end-goal and saving lives is then open source the idea and / or go over-seas with it, heck, do both! Best of luck, I am routing for your win!!! And the subsequent win of every infant!
“But then we ran out of money, lawyers and medical experts told us there were liability issues, that gaining FDA approval would take years and millions, though why that should be the case for a non-contact device we never understood.”
Treating an infant to a 120 dB sound burst is hardly “non-contact”.
It only happens if the heart rate dips below 10 beats-per-minute, after a very specific deceleration that predicts imminent death with a 97 percent accuracy based on SIDS research (yes, there are babies that die on recording heart monitors). If the alarm goes the baby is dying.
I understand, but also understand why FDA would want to approve (or not) such a device as yours.
Whoa there big guy. You’re sounding a bit selfish here – wanting to claim all the money, and denying the opportunity for other like-minded groups to invent some terrific gadgets that could go far beyond your own invention. Given that your invention would be rejected immediately for failing to meet even the basic requirements, I think your letter to Paul Jacobs was a bit rich. Good luck to the actual contestants – they have got their work cut out for them (the requirements are fairly full on). And Bob, take Aleks advice (and often your own advice), and keep trying other ways to get your product to markets (but maybe not the US market). It sounds like a wonderful invention.
Don’t patronize me. You have no idea what this device can do (more than you imagine), but even if this gizmo didn’t exist there would still be a serious design flaw in this contest. More on that tomorrow.
Hmmm.
I read the guidelines for the QTXP, and I doubt Bob’s device meets them, worthy as it may be. I do agree that it is a flawed contest in several ways. Finally, I assume that the strategy underlying an X prize is “entrainment”: getting $100M or more of investment for $10M of prize money by having several teams compete. If that’s the case, then awarding prize money immediately, deserved or not, runs counter to the reason for having X Prizes in the first place.
Calling you on your BS isn’t patronizing! You are refusing to answer the most basic questions that intelligent people are asking.
Please consider crowdsourcing, Bob. I’d sign up today.
I agree with the previous poster. You might be able to get this going with something like kickstarter and a facebook campaign. This is such a great idea and you’d get not only people who have lost children, but also people who like geeky things (and tricorders Hello Trekkies and Trekkers). I really hope you don’t give up on this. There were so many times with my two littles I woke up thinking they weren’t breathing. They were or I scared them back to it in my panic. Not having to panic would be amazing and I’m sure other mothers out there would feel the same way. I am very sorry for your loss and so very glad you did something productive. Please share it!
T
Bob, really I want this for you. Let us know if there is anything the ‘internet community’ can do to help change Jacobs’ mind.
It’s not Paul Jacobs. I doubt he even knows about this and I’m sure he didn’t make any of these decisions. It’s the X-Prize Foundation that writes the rules and then changes them at will, except when they don’t. The problem lies there. Qualcomm means no harm, they are just lazy.
28 years ago we brought my daughter home. Evidently the doctors were concerned; they wanted her on a monitor. The tech had trouble getting it connected. I quickly deduced the problem was a bent pin in an RS232 type connector. Once I got the pin more or less straight the tech completed the connection. It ran a strip for two nights, as I recall, and that was all. My daughter is still with us.
A device of this nature has other uses.
Five years ago, after 3 months of rehab after a stroke, the last night I was there, I got a new roommate. This gentleman was in bad shape. He was on oxygen. A tech fussed seemingly for hours, with an oxygen generator, before she left. I was concerned I wouldn’t sleep well with the noise from the oxygen generator. From conversation, I gather he had flat-lined a couple of times in the hospital, but I guess Medicare insisted he get out of the hospital to a rehab center. About 8 the next morning the aide came in with breakfast. She came in, took a look at the guy and ran for help, but it was too late. The nurse tried to get him going, then the local fire department tried. The heart shock machine apparently detected a pace maker and didn’t want to fire because (I think) the shock would fry the pace maker. A monitor like this tricorder might have saved him. They checked us about 6 AM, so he was presumably OK then.
They had bed monitors to detect people falling out of their bed that made a racket like this tricorder! It would probably require some software tweaking for this purpose, but that shouldn’t be difficult. Maybe 120 DB, aside from waking up most of the floor, might have gotten him going by itself!
Bob,
You are too modest; I have to acknowledge all of the work you’ve done and not just the accomplishments you’ve had during your “so-called career” which should – and perhaps does – make most people envious.
Have you thought about going a slightly different route with your solution? Verizon has the Innovation Program (http://developer.verizon.com/) which could provide assistance as appropriate to bring it to market – on your own schedule.
No matter what happens, please keep the ideas coming!
Regards,
Jerry
First, I am sorry for your loss. Even though it occurred back in 2002, it must still hurt to this day,
If this device you say took four years to create actually does what you claim it can do, how on earth you could you just ‘shelve it’ over 6 years ago?!
With someone with such a personal connection to this device, I cannot imagine how you would let business and market reasons stand in your way to bring this to the world. Why not, as many others have said, open source it?
I can’t wrap my head around your decision four years ago to mothball it. I just can’t get there. Perhaps because I haven’t experienced such a loss. Perhaps because of other differences between us.
I just feel if I had gone through what you did, and then developed what you say you developed, I would not let anything stand in my way of getting it out there to help save lives.
Bob,
I wondered for years what the detail of your SIDS initiative was, and it’s fascinating to read about it now.
Perhaps there’s some mileage to be had in extending your strategy and aiming for wider coverage? ‘Inventor says X-Prize rules actually delaying life-saving breakthrough’ -type headlines?
In any case, I appreciate the enormous commitment and effort you’ve put into this already. “Only” 2,500 babies’ lives is 2,500 too many.
Good luck with whatever develops next with this.
Hmm, interesting.
60GHz is smack in the narrow band that is sensitive to oxygen molecules, in which the radiation can vary with temperature. In this case, body temperature. Although this is usually done over long range.
So I can maybe see how that 60GHz transceiver box might be able to detect mammalian life forms in the room. But how does it do heart rate? Throw us a bone!
Send the prototype into the Teardown Tuesday segment on my video blog and we can dissect it!
Since it monitors breathing maybe the device could also help people with sleep apnea. Some modifications, such as strapping a wireless joy buzzer to the patients head so the alarm doesn’t scare the bejesus out of the person next to them, may be needed.
It isn’t a medical device. You sell it as an electronic mood ring. Port it to game consoles and make it a game about controlling your heartbeat by zen or some stupid crystal laced crap. And then you play the oh, by the way game. The Internet is great for that.
Robert,
I’m confused about your device and your claims about it. You told a previous commenter “You have no idea what this device can do (more than you imagine), but even if this gizmo didn’t exist there would still be a serious design flaw in this contest.” So I must be missing something.
As described, I don’t see how your device would be able to diagnose the set of 15 diseases as capably as a team of physicians. I would be extremely happy to be wrong, and obviously no one knows what your creation can do as well as you. Could you clarify that you actually can do such a broad range of illness diagnostics?
So litigation and precautionary principles have stopped business advancement? I’m shocked, shocked!
But please put up more posts about decimal stock prices doing more damage than Sarbanes Oxley.
Whatever you do, don’t stop writing columns about this! Every little bit of awareness helps.
Seems to me there is another, larger market of people who suffer from sleep apnea. I hope you can move this forward Bob. I had a friend who almost lost a son to SIDS. Fortunately the father was a biomedical engineer and knew exactly what to do when he noticed his child stop breathing.
“You see I have a beef with your Qualcomm Tricorder X-Prize and I want you to make some changes.”
“But your prize rules say I have to pay $5,000 so that 35 months from now you’ll look at the work we have already done.
How stupid is that?”
Wow. I thought you’d have more tact than this Bob. If I received this letter from you, I’d make sure to run the contest for it’s duration, not out of spite, but in order to judge the *best* entry, not the *first* entry.
[…] Qualcomm Tricorder X-Prize is another poorly conceived contest […]
I’ve been reading this blog for several years via Google Reader, and you’ve hooked me with this particular article. Could you avoid regulatory hassle by marketing this device as strictly for monitoring animals? Wink wink nudge nudge?
Another random idea for marketing your invention: Chinese manufacture, ebay sales.
I consider myself a budget audiophile, and there is an increasingly large supply of mid- and high-fi audio products on ebay. All made in, and shipped direct from, China. Many of them are literally knock-offs of expensive existing products. Many have dubious our outright bogus components. And many are e.g. the PCB only, or sold as a kit, targeted at the DIY audio enthusiast.
Perhaps your product could be sold through such channel, but with a goofy name like, “Extra Sensitive Dwelling Condition Monitoring Device (Evaluation Board)”.
Then use word of mouth to spread around what the product *really* is.
Yes, this. I’ve used eBay as a customer to route around other unjust/unconstitutional (and thus void) regulations for personal home electronics. I would have zero qualms about doing so to protect my infant child. We took the precautions we could with sleeping wedges and such, so why wouldn’t we have bought one of these too? (Incidentally our second child was born in 2006 so I could have been a customer).
I don’t want to tell you what to do, but from the available information here, if I were in your shoes I’d be using every available avenue to move this forward (and I understand this article is one of them). Don’t beg the FDA for permission to save lives – put them in the position of going after a SIDS monitor, especially after n number of confirmed saves (can you do data logging with WiFi?). They might ask for concessions, but a full shutdown will be politically untenable. I know, it would be great to have this in Babies R Us, but if only 1% of new parents bought one for now, 25 lives per year is still a tremendous achievement (especially compared to zero) and you can fund growth from revenues.
You might also consider a mail-in program for parents who are done with the device, and a needs-based distribution of used devices for those who cannot afford to purchase one. Or local companies could be the owners and rent them out, like they do breast pumps.
You have yet to answer the question of how your device could diagnose one disease, let alone fifteen. Did you read the contest guidelines?
Bob,
Have not read all the comments, so please forgive if this has been suggested or attempted.
Kickstarter has all ready been used to fund a number of products that have come to market.
I would be one that would be happy to contribute a small amount to such a worthy endeavor. And without looking to be a shareholder or compensated.
My guess is that you would exceed your funding goal. Especially considering your blog followers and personal contacts.
This article reminds me of George McGovern. After he left politics he opened a bed and breakfast, and was shocked by the experience.
So suppose I am -which fortunately is not the case- the parent of a baby killed by SIDS one month ago. Now I find out reading your blog that you have had for 6 years and invention that could have saved my child, but you are not marketing it.
I would go mad, and I would try by any mean to steal the technology from you and publish it in Wikileaks.
I read your 2002 column on the death of your child and got deeply emotioned by it. Later I knew that you have abandoned the idea of creating a SIDS avoiding device but I supposed it have been due to technical difficulties.
If the device works but you don’t want to fight regulations, publish in a scientific journal the underlying technology, so that somebody else can duplicate and market it.
If you don’t want to do that, then it is simply a question of money, and you are in some small part responsible for the deaths SIDS keeps causing.
You could work with Gerber and sell it as another baby monitor. I don’t think the 120db is an issue. How loud is a professional interior fire alarm?
A doctor in Oklahoma City developed an app that will do an EKG using a smart phone. From the time it was announced until the time they started selling it was less than a year.
Here’s a link to the device. https://www.ideaconnection.com/new-inventions/smartphone-ecg-04241.html
The ECG smartphone gadget requires contact with the patient. The silly contest rules, I think, are in keeping with the original star-trek device that was non-contact.
Bob,
I’m a medical device product manager who has worked on dozens of FDA submissions, and I’m not entirely certain that what you’re talking about counts as a medical device. It will depend heavily on how you market it.
See: http://amzn.com/B0039UEJCI
They’re able to get away without FDA approval/clearance, but notice there’s not a mention of SIDS in the marketing. That’s not an accident. You can call it a movement sensor and be fine. Mention SIDS and now all of a sudden you’re treating something.
Apparently devices like the one Bob proposed do exist. Perhaps Bob wants to be able to mention SIDS to distinguish his from all the others.
Hi Robert,
Great work starting such an interesting debate!
FYI there is a device that can accurately provide non invasive monitoring of a patient who is sleeping: http://biancamed.com/products-solutions/products/
The product similarly faced massive challenges coming to market and it’s taken a long time and lots of money. As an observer it seemed to be fuelled by a similar passion to that you have: this is just something that has to be done.
It’s great to see that the tech is now being sold commercially as an advanced alarm clock and I think this is an important first step in creating market acceptance and getting this distributed eg. check out the tech in devices sold by brands such as Omron and Gear4:
http://mhealthinsight.com/2012/06/01/medical-vs-consumer-whats-the-best-way-to-package-a-mhealth-device/
RE: Paul Jacobs and Qualcomm meaning “no harm, they are just lazy”. I think that’s quite unfair. They’re a technology company who have prioritised the contribution that they can make to this area and I have personally observed the CEO (and his fathers) passion for the contribution they can make to the future of healthcare eg. here is a photo I took of Paul engaging with the team behind the Biancamed company and learning about their technology and it’s potential to prevent SIDS at an event that his company sponsored in Washington DC:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/71721527@N05/6497656363/
Dear Mr. Cringely,
I like to offer you the $5,000 for your domain name Tricorder.com
if the Domain you registered has lapsed or you know longer control it. your also invited to participate in the VOXearch entry for Qualcomm’s Tricorder Al of our Designs will be released into the wild with open Source code. The deadline to entry has also been extended to June 21, 2013