Post
by Guest » Sun Aug 19, 2007 2:51 am
My opinion:
I don't think there is anything "taboo" about talking about the software. While I don't and can't speak for anyone I'm no different than you or anyone else here other than a customer,
I don't think the problem is with cpap.com or Johnny. In fact if you were here in the early days you'd know they were one of the first pioneers or advocates to make software available for patients, one of the first to offer those of us WITHOUT medical insurance a realistic affordable way of purchasing our equipment without being raped and ripped off like you see every day with the brick and mortar DME.
However, I'm sure they also have to abide (legally) by the rules and regulations imposed by our government and the FDA. Well the FDA is nothing but a group of doctors there under the guise that they are protecting us.
Well we all know what that co$t$, they impose rules and regulations to impose their will across the land, if they could they would strip every alternative therapy option away they could.
Who do you think those FDA doctors talk to? Other doctors. If you are coming out with a new product or drug as a company what do you do? You hire a doctor. Why? so they can use the good ole boy network and get your product approved. You know what those other doctors need for approval.
When it is all boiled down it is all about politics and money. Look at the HME market, it is made up of DME "dealers" and conglomerates. I seen that idiot on MadMoney the other day recommending that everyone move their money out of financials and buy Apria stock. That was because he was totally wrong on the Real Estate call and Fed rate cut a few weeks before he went off the deep end on youtube. The week before he was totally against any kind of rate cut and said screw the lenders, sell your stock, let them go bankrupt. The guys an idiot, a sham artist and a flip-flop man. He is encouraging investors to invest in a company that WE all know here rips us all off, creates a model for other DME's to follow and do the same. But I guess that whore only cares about money and profit and ripping people off as he is not on the receiving end of it.
If there is anyone here that is taboo on that subject and needs good kick in the groin it is probably Respironics, ever since they got that new "doctor" running that company the patient and their rights have taken a seat in the waiting room for an extra hour or two.
I've done software before, I bet it wouldn't take them more than a week to remove the ability to "write" prescriptions from the EncorePro software and come up with a "Patient version" of EncorePro. The old software didn't have that ability, why wasn't it a problem back then? For many years you could download it for free.
So you have to apply some logic when you look at this, our host has to follow the rules, if Respironics says they cannot sell the software, then he cannot sell the software, if he DOES he risks his dealership or ability to sell those machines. So what would you do? Risk your ability to sell you bread and butter for some $99 software? Not too hard a decision as I see it.
And you can be assured Respironics has their trolls reading and scanning these boards. How do you think their support staff learns about their own machines?
If there is a problem they will find out about it here first.
I've been here long enough to read between the lines, it is not a taboo topic with our host, they would sell it to you if they were allowed to. It is that simple.
At the same time, they cannot allow posts appearing on this board telling you were you can go buy it either, because if they did that it would be the same as selling it themselves.
If you find it for sale, DON'T be STUPID and post it in the forum, that is the dumbest thing you can do.
If you want to help someone out in obtaining the software and you know where you can buy it, send the person wanting it a PM message. But I wouldn't even do that if I seen they are a newbie and only made 1 or 2 posts as it is probably just the trolls fishing for the source so they can eliminate that site also.
But I've never seen our host selling that software for $259 or $279 like those other sites, they are flat out just ripping you off, software isn't worth that much, I mean it is good but not that good.
In a way I almost wish it does go away, because once it does some creative sole with software writing ability will hack the card and write their own download software to read the card data and it will probably be much better and more compatible than EncorePro ever was. It has always been a PIA to install.
Do you guys really need 2-3 pages of meaningless compliance data? I don't.
Do we really need to have our data stored in a SQL database? I don't.
I just want to know how many AI's and HI's and leaks I had say over a week so I know if I'm either improving or getting worse.
Yeah trend reports are nice but after a while you even get bored with those. I admit those graphs are great and it is nice to see if you are trending up or down with therapy, especially that AHI vs Pressure report.
Maybe we should setup a separate "Marketing" poll for that creative software sole asking if visitors here if they would be interested in:
Purchase the reporting software (read only from the SmartCard) if it were available for $99 a copy?
I know I would pay $99 that for a copy without hesitation, that is less than I've paid for it in the past. I'd even be willing to bet that Johnny would be interested in offering it for sale on cpap.com if it were "Read Only" and didn't write "Prescriptions" and violate his dealer agreement.
Because as patients we cannot really write "Prescriptions". EncorePro 1.8 allows you to write prescriptions. So it goes back to what I said before, Respironics is the one at fault here, in my opinion they shot themselves in the foot, that decision was about as bright a move as that other company down under's move in doubling the price we have to pay for equipment all under the false guise they would offer us patients better service.
Well we have all seen how well that plan worked out for us patients now haven't we.
At the same time, I would bet money the Respironics reps are hearing at every stop at a doctors office "I don't want my patients having those reports", they find out the truth about their therapy progress they may want to sue me for being stupid
I recall some genius here thought it would be such a great idea to SPAM Respironics support lines and phone lines with complaints about the software, oh I remember it was losing a few days worth of data. Let's all call them, they will fix it!
Yeah they fixed it alright, oh what a smooth move that was, look what it did for us? all that little tactic did was get the software completely pulled from the marketplace, from being sold anywhere.
I say we support the creative software hack that comes up with an alternative solution and you won't have any more hassles obtaining software for your machine. They can never completely pull that software, they have too many machines out there using that card going back 2-3 generations of machines. There has to be millions of machines out there by now, most are using that very same SmartCard.
Get the control of the software out of the doctors dictating who can have it and out of the FDA's control and it will be freely available most and likely at a lower cost.
Once that card is removed from the machine it is simply a memory card, a SIM card, it is no longer a medical device. Just like the SIM card found in your GSM cellphone, it has CPU, memory and a real time clock on it. How do you think the date & time are displayed on your cell phone. That clock gets set by the network but it is kept on the phone. Back in 1992 there were only 2-3 cellphones equipped with a clock chip, Murata, Panasonic and Mitsubishi. Motorola & Nokia the biggest players in the market didn't have them it wasn't until those came out with SIM cards did they have that feature. Only difference between that SIM card in the cellphone and the SmartCard is the latter has more plastic like a credit card surrounding it, the gold colored chip is the only part that is the meat and potato's.
Although I hate them, one thing nice about using that technology, is once you remove the card from that machine you are no longer under the thumb of the FDA, doctors or Respironics. They would have to prove you were "writing" to their card before anything could ever be done. You as the patient and owner of the card you can decide if it gets erased or not. But if you only READ that card and the data contained on it save it to a computer generate a report from it, there isn't squat that any one can do about it. That is why I say support the software hack.
Figure it out, how many people have the software and how many want the software?
That is your market. If you want a new A-Flex machine, you will need 1.8 or higher to read data from it OR hopefully a creative software sole will come up with an alternative.
Programming your machine via the keypad is still the most reliable way in my opinion. As long as your finger still works you have a way to program the machine.
I think a poll should be along the lines:
Do you now own or use the reporting software? - Yes/No
If the software was available to READ the data from your machine,
Would you purchase it if it were available for $99? - Yes/No
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That would give that creative software sole an idea of what interest there would be in creating such software. You never know, even those that don't want you to have
it may find hey that is pretty good stuff and even them yoyo's would buy it.
Let's see if I sold 10 copies a week (taking off my socks), that is like $52K per year... if I sold like 100 copies per week, that is pretty good chunk of change.
How many machines did Resmed recall recently? Think it was around a year's worth of machine about 300,000? and that wasn't all of them globally, only a certain batch. I think Respironics sells more machines than that globally.