Stuart K. Hayashi
The following is a section of the longer essay, “How Billionaires and Capitalism Save Billions of Lives — Including Yours.” That essay includes an index listing various case studies of a for-profit initiative saving lives. The blog post below is of at least one such case study. You can return to that index here.
Another medical technology not to be overlooked is magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). An MRI scan
can detect cancers, brain injuries, multiple sclerosis, and even dementia. It can even detect some diseases that CT scans cannot, such as prostate cancer and uterine cancer.
According to the American Chemical Society, the number of lives saved by MRI scans is in the “millions.”
Raymond V. Damadian was a great contributor to the creation of this technology. Sadly, his patents have not always been respected as well as they should have. In 1997,
he won a patent infringement suit against General Electric for $128.7 million.
On account of his troubles, Damadian has become a public advocate for the rights of inventors. Coauthoring
an op-ed in 2011 where he favorably cites Ayn Rand’s
Atlas Shrugged, he expresses concern about changes in patent law that undermine the protections of independent inventors.
Damadian’s machine was excellent, but there was always room for improvement. One major difficulty has been that the MRI machine was so large that it would fill the space of an entire room. Yet many patients most in need of an MRI scan are severely disabled and cannot even be wheeled to that special room. For that reason, Jonathan Rothberg — the same man who contributed to gene-mapping technologies and co-invented home COVID test kits — decided to do something in this field, too. He had his company Hyperfine come out with Swoop, a portable MRI device that can be wheeled to the patients. Many hospitals in developing countries cannot afford to install a conventional MRI scanner, but they can afford a Swoop. It is $50,000, which is twenty times cheaper than is a conventional MRI.
As
Fast Company magazine
puts it, “This portable, affordable new MRI machine is already saving lives around the world.”
Return to index of case studies of lifesaving for-profit ventures.
