alt Hacker NewsFormula One teams are known to throw money (and lots of it) at problems. It works for them because:
- 2 drivers/cars per team.
- ~2 hour race on a weekend every ~2 weeks per season.
The hospital needs to do this for hundreds of patients every day. They need solutions that can scale (cost less per person). This was about one specific problem (handover) but different patients could bring with them different complications and add new constraints.
Still very cool though. Glad they got some actionable insights.
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> It works for them because:
You missed item number 3 from your list ....
Because F1 has a shit load of sponsors willing to throw a shit load of money at the team as long as they get their logo on the side of the car.
Hospitals don't have that. Even the US has not (yet ?) stooped so low as to have corporate sponsorship for hospitals !
"Mr Patient, your heart operation is being sponsored by $megaCorp ... pay extra to remove the ads from your implanted pacemaker".
It's more to do with the bureaucratic costs of getting a product licensed as a medical device. By the standards of the medical industry, an F1 wheel nut gun or a WEC refuelling rig isn't particularly expensive; the prohibitive part is getting a specialist item approved for medical use. Motorsport can do things that don't scale, because no-one is stopping them from using a one-off prototype made to precisely fit their needs. They (and their suppliers) iterate incredibly rapidly Bringing a new medical device to the market is an immensely expensive multi-year project. Obviously there are benefits to the precautionary principle, but I'm not sure that anyone has quantified the costs.