Can the AutoIQ really be this bad?

I'm concerned about the new PRS1 AutoIQ machine.

In particular, it appears to indicate that it will do a total of 30 days of autopressure/autotitration. Then it's forever locked out from more autopressure. You can choose to do your 30 days in chunks as small as 3 days, but after you've used 30 days total, it's no longer able to do autopressure.

Does anyone know it this is something that can be reset through the clinician's menu, or is it a permanent lock?

I think this is a terrible idea. After a certain amount of usage, the machine cripples itself. If you use one of these and then sell it to another person, the second person can't use the full capabilities of the machine. If the patient loses a lot of weight, changes masks, gets a dental appliance, gets some sort of surgery, gets dentures, etc., he may need a new auto titration. With this machine, he's out of luck. He can't use the function he bought the machine for.

I think this may be the camel's nose under the tent. It's like copy protection from the RIAA and MPAA. Will the next step be making it technically impossible to change pressure unless you're an authorized dealer? Will it become impossible to by used CPAP machines? How about having the machine refuse to operate unless you come in yearly and have your doctor bless your use of the machine for the next year? With big fat fees to the doctor, DME, and the equipment manufacturer?

Everyone should categorically refuse to accept, or even touch, one of those machines. Too bad there will be uneducated, sleep-deprived people getting stuck with them.

archangle wrote:I think this may be the camel's nose under the tent. It's like copy protection from the RIAA and MPAA. Will the next step be making it technically impossible to change pressure unless you're an authorized dealer? Will it become impossible to by used CPAP machines? How about having the machine refuse to operate unless you come in yearly and have your doctor bless your use of the machine for the next year? With big fat fees to the doctor, DME, and the equipment manufacturer?

I agree these are valid concerns. I'd like to think that capitalism would take it's toll if Respironics ever got stupid enough to do stuff like this, but sadly capitalism doesn't work right when DME's are pushing machines on uneducated individuals who are already not thinking clearly because they are sleep deprived.

Breathe Jimbo wrote:Everyone should categorically refuse to accept, or even touch, one of those machines. Too bad there will be uneducated, sleep-deprived people getting stuck with them.

Actually, the functions provided sound like a great idea. Autotitrate, set a pressure, then slowly adjust the pressure every 30 hours. It would be a good option to add to the "real" autopressure machine.

Locking you out after 30 days is evil, if it really does that.

Alshain wrote:I agree these are valid concerns. I'd like to think that capitalism would take it's toll if Respironics ever got stupid enough to do stuff like this, but sadly capitalism doesn't work right when DME's are pushing machines on uneducated individuals who are already not thinking clearly because they are sleep deprived.

Capitalism doesn't work well if you don't have a free market. Unfortunately, medical equipment is far from a free market. There's very little competition seen by the customer. He's often steered to one dealer, has very little choice or info about which product he gets, etc. Things are tightly controlled by the medical cartel.