The Quiet Demise of Truly Incredible Technology
Of all of the innovative technologies I came face to face with at TechEd last month the most incredible of them all was a gentleman in a wheelchair.
It wasn’t just any wheelchair of course… it was (I would later learn) an iBOT… a wheelchair designed to free the disabled from the shackles that truly bind them. It climbs stairs and does much more, including let users have an eye-level conversation with an average-sized adult male. I believe it was developed by Dean Kamen (of Segway fame) and was sold by Johnson & Johnson for a staggering price tag of US$22,000… of which Medicare covered about US$6,000.
Of course for those who can afford it I am sure these incredible machines were well worth the money. After all what price can you put on your freedom of mobility? It was a great step forward in the equal rights that handicapped persons deserve in our world…
…and it is gone.
According to MSNBC they have been discontinued because it was simply not profitable, as they were only selling a few hundred of them per year. (See article http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30929301/)
I am tempted to say that it is disgraceful that a corporation would put profits ahead of the rights of the handicapped, but I suppose that is the job of corporations – to answer first and last to their shareholders.
Still I cannot help but wonder if our governments (U.S. and Canada) who have been spending hundreds of billions of dollars bailing out industries such as the auto industry and financial institutions couldn’t have found some way to step in and subsidize the company. Those industries are important… I get it; but isn’t this too? If for no other reason than so that we could say that we did more than mandate that some buildings have access to the handicapped, we actually gave them access to all buildings!
Read the complete post at http://mitchgarvis.com/blogs/mitch/archive/2009/05/25/the-quiet-demise-of-truly-incredible-technology.aspx