KQED blogger and SPM member Eve Harris has written a great brief piece on Hugo’s desire to access the data from his implanted defibrillator, beginning:

Hugo Campos was apologetic about postponing a scheduled interview with me two weeks ago. In a midday email he wrote, “Just had the biggest arrhythmia ever. I’m trying to recover from the scare. I might go into the ER. I’ll keep you posted.”

Apt timing, I guess, because it illustrated, more than any mere rationale could have, the impact this situation has on a patient. As we documented here from Hugo’s live tweet stream, he was pretty nervous, and it took 3.5 hours for the ICD maker’s representative to show up and “interrogate” the device to find out what happened.

Tell me, please, someone, why on earth the vendor doesn’t want him to be able to do this himself.