Does anyone have insight into the whole story here? There are so many unanswered questions.<p>>Their child’s current processor—a “basic” model designed for the developing market—was becoming “obsolete” and would no longer be serviced by the company. The family would need to purchase another one, said to be a “compulsory upgrade.”<p>...from the quote above, it doesn't sound like there is anything wrong with their existing hardware. And it doesn't seem like the existing hardware is broken. It sounds like a pushy sales department is trying to scare these people into upgrading to the latest-and-greatest version? Or is there some supposed medical reason you need to adjust the parameters of the device on a regular basis?<p>>In one especially devastating case, a father lamented that his daughter, who had been doing well with her implant, could no longer hear since her device had become obsolete.<p>Is there a timer in the existing hardware that is shutting things off after a certain amount of time? Or it phones home somehow, and gets instruction from the mother ship that it should stop working? Is there more than this one case? I guess the article keeps using the term "planned obsolescence", but I need some more evidence to go on here. Could it be that in this one case, the kid dropped the external processor in the river, and now it doesn't work? And the article also keeps mentioning continued maintenance, but seems to be conflating maintenance with upgrades. Maybe these people are showing up at the audiologist for a "check-up", and the audiologists are bricking the devices in the name of upgrades?
Here's the thing about cochlear implants that the article at first glance does not tell the reader:<p>* you undergo a VERY expensive surgery.<p>* in the surgery you get installed the actual cochlear implant.<p>* the implant itself is VERY basic and is designed to work with future models of the hearing aid (the one behind the ear).<p>It is therefore, unlike what the article seems to suggest at first glance, not the case that families spend money (a lot of it - upwards $50,000 per ear iirc), only to be told later that they have to go through it all again.
I bet what this family experience is a sales department telling them the very real situation that hearing aids - just like smart phones - improve over time and that old models reach an end of life date eventually. There's nothing new here although hearing aids are arguable much more expensive than smartphones - not that they had to be, Hearing Care Professionals make a lot of money per hearing aid.<p>But that's a story for another time.
I wonder how companies go about retiring these sound processors on the technical level. Are those in need of continuous updates to keep working? Do they receive a final update one day which bricks them? Since the consequences seem so heartbreaking I would imagine that unofficial ways of prolonging the life time of this hardware do exist?
The article barely touches on it but the real threat isn't from the manufacturers producing newer and better processors, but rather from insurers/single payers not covering the cost of new processors. I deliberately use the word "threat" to answer the question that several other comments ask, or rather point out it's the wrong one: "Why does the processor need to be replaced with a newer model?" In ideal circumstances, it doesn't. But if the insurer/single payer has declared they will not pay for a new one for some ridiculous amount of time like 10 or 15 years after the previous are bought, then the user is under the constant threat that the old ones will break but not be replaceable.[0] That is only tangentially related to old models being replaced with new ones, although this may be the excuse that insurers/single payers use not to replace lost or broken processors, e.g. by insisting that the old ones be repaired even though that's no longer an option (granted, this example would be a combined problem with the payers and the manufacturers).<p>Apparently the upgrade threat is such an issue that the way even exceptional insurance avoids the issue (per my family's experience) is to purchase the user an extra processor at the same time as the processor is first purchased (or, <i>eventually</i>, upgraded): a preemptive replacement/backup unit. This way presumably the payer doesn't have to have on the books a difficult-to-quantify liability from needing to replace a lost/damaged processor with an unknown future model.<p>[0] Critical context: Unlike a hearing aid, the process of getting a cochlear implant physically destroys any residual hearing the user may have had. When the processor is not present and functioning, the user is completely deaf. And that's little-d deaf, which is the problem: cochlear implant users have explicitly chosen <i>not</i> to enter the big-D Deaf world (which largely rejects implants anyways), and so are completely dependent upon their devices functioning correctly.
Any company that brings a medical implant device to market should be required by law to establish a trust to fund continued support of the device for the natural lifespan of the youngest/longest lived recipient, period.<p>Also, all designs, software and patents should be open sourced/released to the public domain if the company goes bankrupt or the product line gets sunsetted.<p>This is surgery, these are peoples lives. These are their <i>organs.</i> People that make executive decisions like this are subhuman scum.
It's not explained in the article how these compulsory upgrades are being forced. These are not net enabled devices. Perhaps the idea is that the receiver is no longer for sale and cannot be replaced once it has eventually broken?