The Ongoing Costs of a Bandage
Mateo ran burst through the front door, carrying the warm spring air into the Jersey City townhouse along with a leaf from the ginkgo trees which lined the block. He had been sent outside by his parents to play in Hamilton park, but he had gone to the pollinator garden instead where he watched the bees and butterflies fly between flowers.
“There was a massive bee hive near the fountain!” he buzzed, home much sooner than his parents expected.
Ruby, his mother, saw him waving a leaf around in the air but her eyes were fixed on the red mark on his knee, just below a newfound hole in his shorts. It was a clear scrape.
“Mateo, were you playing on the concrete near the fountain? I’ve told you not to do that,” she said, her voice more worried than angry.
“Oh, that? Tis just a flesh wound,” he laughed at his own joke.
But Ruby didn’t think it was funny. Her mind immediately went into nursing mode as she knelt down to look at the scrape. The wound was small, but it was bleeding a bit. “Looks like a bit of a tumble there, bud,” she diagnosed.
As she stood up to go get the first aid kit from the bathroom, Nick stepped out from his home office.
“Mateo, you’re home early. Ruby? Everything okay?”
“Why don’t you ask your son why he was playing near the fountain again?” she said sharply.
“Ah, tis just a flesh wound,” chuckled as Nick stepped back into his office.
“Oh sure, both of you keep thinking this is a joke, but I’m the one who has to clean up the mess,” Ruby shook her head.
“Hold on, I’ve got it this time,” Nick stepped back into the kitchen with a sleek white box, with rigid square edges on top. “This is the future of first aid. I got this from a brand to write a sponsored story for them.”
“And exactly what brand is giving you money this time?” she raised an eyebrow with familiar skepticism.
“This is the latest in electroceutical bandages,” Nick explained as he pulled out a single patch from the box. It looked like a largely transparent square. “Nanoscale sensors can measure the wound in real-time and apply electrical impulses to stimulate the body’s natural healing process three times faster.”
“And has this been clinically tested?”
“They’re going through it. Don’t worry. If nothing else, it’s just an ordinary bandage,” Nick shrugged. “But look, this is the kind of healthcare innovations that I’ve written in my stories. It’s real now!”
“Wow, we’re living in the future,” Mateo said with beaming eyes. “Does it glow?”
“Maybe not that far in the future, bud,” Nick chuckled. “It is a marvel of modern electrotherapy. I guess you could look at it like how Superman heals himself with the sun.”
Ruby took the bandage from her husband and looked at the unshakeable optimism in his eyes. He was always so excited about the future, and she admired that about him. Most of the time. The felt the patch in her hand. It was thin and flexible, like a second layer of skin. She couldn’t help but be a little skeptical, as complex systems often failed in real healthcare settings. Still, both of her boys were so excited about this.
“Alright then, let’s give it a try,” she carefully cleaned off Mateo’s knee with a bit of water and soap, then applied the patch over the scrape. “There we go, does it hurt?”
“Not at all!” Mateo said merrily. “When does the future start?”
“First, I need to download the Horizons Health app,” Nick tapped on his tablet. “That will allow us to activate the electroceutical bandage and track the healing in real-time.”
“I guess nothing is just ‘on’ anymore,” she sighed. “So it doesn’t even work if you don’t have the app? What if someone doesn’t have a smartphone, or a stable Internet connection?”
“Those are minute details,” Nick dismissed, already downloading the app. “Early adopters might have a few hurdles. It’s dogfooding before it’s full ready. Think more about the long-term benefits. Every minor injury can be quickly triaged and treated at home, without needing to visit a hospital just for a something simple. Public health could focus on the more complex cases and save everyone money.”
He showed them the app once the download completed. The icon was displayed a healing cross on a slight angle, colored in green. He tapped it and the app’s splashscreen appeared, showing a futuristic animation of a bandage being applied with digital bits floating around it.
“Alright, let’s take a look. User Agreement, Privacy Policy, standard stuff,” he mumbled. “Data anonymization, aggregated data collection, sure. Accept.”
“What’s that? Access to our family health profile?” Ruby looked at the permissions popup.
“Seems logical. It needs to know about Mateo’s baseline health to optimize the electrical impulses.”
“I don’t know if I like that.”
“It’s a necessary pre-requisite for personalize medicine,” Nick tapped, deciding for her.
Next came the account creation: add in an email, generate a passkey, add two-factor authentication. That meant performing a biometric scan of his fingerprint to ensure data access would be private and secure. With each step, Ruby became more concerned about every extra bit of personal data being connected to an unseen data network.
“Okay, I think this is the last step for real,” Nick said, slightly defensively, as he held the tablet over the patch, connecting it to the app. It let out a confirmation chime. “Okay, we’ve got a connection. Now we should be able to see the wound data.”
Then there was a error chime. Nick’s grin faded as he read the message that had just appeared.
Please activate your Horizons Heal-Link Subscription to Continue
“What? Subscription?” Ruby asked, confused.
“No, that can’t be right. Let me look at the settings,” Nick scrambled, tapping more on the screen.
“Son of a b...” Nick stopped himself. “This is ridiculous. Apparently the electroceutical bandage requires a monthly subscription to work. There’s a free trial, then twenty bucks a week.”
“Twenty dollars for a bandage?” Ruby was incensed. “I thought this was supposed to be innovative healthcare.”
“I got the early access kit! It didn’t say... there’s no way they’d actually put essential functionality behind a paywall,” Nick was in disbelief, struggling to process how far from utopia this felt. “It’s supposed to be a basic healthcare product, not a luxury item.”
“Yes,” Ruby agreed, taking the tablet from his hands and closed the app. “This is classic rent-seeking behavior disguised as innovation. The true value isn’t in the item itself, but the ongoing payments they trap you with. Right now, all Mateo has is a piece of fabric on his knee.”
“But it’s supposed to have nanoscale electrical stimulation!” Nick argued, knowing he was losing. “There’s supposed to be a vision of preventing infection, improving recovery times, and reducing the strain on the healthcare system. Imagine how great all of that could be.”
He was feeling conflicted now, as his optimism was clashing with the reality of the situation.
“And how many people in Jersey City are interested, or could afford to, pay twenty dollars a week for every scrape they get?” Ruby countered. “Public health is pointless unless it’s accessible, not something that’s premium.”
“So it’s a plain bandage?” Mateo finally spoke up, watching his parents get increasingly tense. “Can I put a regular bandage on it then?”
Their argument, increasingly philosophical and abstract, stopped as they had to deal with the practical reality of their injured son.
“You’re right, bud,” Nick said, letting out a frustrated sigh.
Ruby retrieved a small tube of antiseptic cream and a box of adhesive bandages from the medicine cabinet. She spoke softly as she expertly dressed the wound. “Sometimes, the best solution is the simplest. No apps or subscriptions.”
“Cool, it’s a t-rex!” Mateo beamed as he looked at the new bandage on his knee.