When researching reflow soldering ovens, I happened to find this interesting article about TechShop going bankrupt.
20190102/https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/geek-life/hands-on/techshop-goes-bankrupt
TechShop was a makerspace started by Jim Newton, “who once served as an advisor to the TV show Mythbusters.” Why did it fail? Basically, they highlighted that most makerspaces are not-for-profit and get large grants, “often bankrolled by government or philanthropic organizations.” For these costs, we’re largely talking hardware tools, the kind of large, specialized tools that most people would not personally own themselves.
For my own side, I’ve had other discussions that made me think. What are the primary costs of some of the research projects I am following progress on or doing myself? How are these being funded? Some of the most interesting research projects I am following, such as the EOMA68 Earth Friendly Computing Devices project, are entirely crowd-funded. The EOMA68 project exceeded its funding goal. Despite delays and slowdowns, interestingly this project seems like it is coming through. Yes, due to the delays, there were later some shortages of money, there were later additional donations, and there were some large anonymous private donors who pitched in more money.
For government funded research projects, there are often times very many projects funded that don’t really pan out. Either that, or the customers of the product aren’t really interested in what they got, not to the extent where the development cost would be justified. Take, for example, some kinds of medical devices for the elderly. For sure, there are some elderly who really want the medical devices, and in fact they would have been determined to fund the devices on their own, even if they didn’t end up paying for them in full. But is that true for the vast majority of elderly people? Is a high-tech medical device really what they want, or are their interests elsewhere in something else? Do they see the medical device mainly as a short-term gimmick where they believe not too much effort should be invested in it?
Being that the medical industry has a lot of government and insurance company involvement, there are quite a lot of interesting things to be said about medical technology for all ages and all walks of life. First of all, due to the cost equations, generally this is an area that can be said where there are very many things going on where the patients, the recipients of the products and care, honestly don’t care as much about the products as the providers of the products and care do. This is generally okay under most circumstances, but unfortunately due to the interventions of insurance and government funds, this can also be made the case for very expensive things too.
This also has implications for those people who are interested in developing medical technology. (Suffice it to say, the implications are greater for medical technology developers than, say, those nurses who administer medical care to patients more directly.) A lot of technologists are interested in working on medical technology and may think of doing so being a “dream job.” But, you have to accept the placement of how the technology features with customers. In the end, medical technology is, as it should be, a limited area of the economy, and there is a much larger technology economy outside of medical technology than there is inside it. From a statistical and probabilistic standpoint, you should correspondingly adjust your expectations and, and even personal excitement, about the potential job opportunities too.
Specifically, in the interest of medical research, much of it is funded by very large grants from private individuals who have, in effect, a lot of central power. Either that, or by large government grants that follow the same logic. As it turns out, there is a dearth of crowdfunding for medical devices. Why is this? This kind of goes back to what I was saying. There isn’t intrinsically a large amount of personal interest in these technologies.
Now, for my own research. Some of the best research is that which is funded by sound financial means. Much of my research is based off of very low-cost means. I’m starting to get into hardware, and that means that some of the physical costs involved may be higher. But, for many many tasks, I’ve figured out cheaper, if less conventional, ways to do things, and most of the time, after a bit of practice and learning, I can end up performing the non-conventional technique just as efficiently as the hand-tooling technique with more specialized hand tools.
My advice if you’re interested in medical device technology research? Walk the walk and talk the talk of the same path I’ve described for technology research in general. See if you can fund your own research or get it crowdfunded. That way, you at least know that someone on both the granter and recipient side, even if it only be yourself, is really interested to the same extent as the funds that have been granted.