My elderly mother was advised to purchase a personal EKG/ECG monitor to help investigate occasional atypical heart behavior. She purchased a KardiaMobile 6L. I helped her set it up this weekend - requires a phone app to connect to the device via BT… and, of course, an account with a possibility paid subscription… good lord.
At every turn there are popups for a US $11.99/Month or $99/Year service, required for any use cases that aren’t look at recent records and export a PDF. App closes in the background and opens again… full screen popup next time it opens. Finish an EKG? Popup offering service to have a specialist look at the EKG. Main screen? List of every service not included with the free tier in its own little box with a button to subscribe for each.
So now my mother is supposed to find her instructions on how to navigate around this bullshit, with large text and fingers so dry she struggles to activate the touch screen without a stylus, during an abnormal cardiac event… then navigate around more bullshit to find the record in her history and send her doctor the PDF.
I really wish there was a mandatory interface for consumer medical devices (or just… devices in general) or something so I could just make a solution to bypass the bullshit and get the thing do what it was designed to do. Open the app, big button to record an EKG, prompt to save it or send it after.
My elderly mother was advised to purchase a personal EKG/ECG monitor to help investigate occasional atypical heart behavior. She purchased a KardiaMobile 6L. I helped her set it up this weekend - requires a phone app to connect to the device via BT… and, of course, an account with a possibility paid subscription… good lord.
At every turn there are popups for a US $11.99/Month or $99/Year service, required for any use cases that aren’t look at recent records and export a PDF. App closes in the background and opens again… full screen popup next time it opens. Finish an EKG? Popup offering service to have a specialist look at the EKG. Main screen? List of every service not included with the free tier in its own little box with a button to subscribe for each.
So now my mother is supposed to find her instructions on how to navigate around this bullshit, with large text and fingers so dry she struggles to activate the touch screen without a stylus, during an abnormal cardiac event… then navigate around more bullshit to find the record in her history and send her doctor the PDF.
I really wish there was a mandatory interface for consumer medical devices (or just… devices in general) or something so I could just make a solution to bypass the bullshit and get the thing do what it was designed to do. Open the app, big button to record an EKG, prompt to save it or send it after.