Tech Medical Tricorder

[ANGRYWOLF]

Company Offers $10M Prize For Building Star Trek-Style "Tricorder."

BBC News (1/13, Vallance) reports, "The Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize has challenged researchers to build a tool capable of capturing 'key health metrics and diagnosing a set of 15 diseases,'" which "needs to be light enough for would-be Dr McCoys to carry - a maximum weight of 5lb (2.2kg)." The official Star Trek technical manual defines a tricorder as "a portable 'sensing, computing and data communications device.'" The company hopes "the huge prize may inspire a present-day engineer to figure out the sci-fi gadget's secret, and 'make 23rd Century science fiction a 21st Century medical reality.'"
"If the prize is won in the next two hundred years, mankind will be boldly going beyond Star Trek, which was set in the 23rd century," the UK's Telegraph (1/13, Warman) reports. "The prize was announced at the world's largest technology fair, the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas." Peter Diamandis, X Prize Foundation chairman, said "that he was aiming to use the 'grand' scheme to start a new industry of miniaturised, wireless health diagnostic tools."



FYI....

What do you think ?
I am in favor of this kind of research of course but whether it's practical remains to be seen.
The human genome is suceptible to more diseases than a tricorder could reasonably be expected to detect and analyze.

 

[Ohri-Jin]

Make it Smart with Android OS and its good to go. Update via market and make it google compatible haha. I see potential in this.

It would need x-ray and several inputs and outputs and scanners

 

[Richard B Riddick]

I don't know if remote methods of scanning have developed to a point where its theoretically possible to build a tricorder.

I think the more likely scenario would be a portable device that collects blood, urine, tissue & other assorted samples & analyzes them to compile a diagnosis.

A true to scifi tricorder approach might utilize ultrasound, x-rays, or other scanning methods & I don't know that its currently feasible. OCR(optical chracter recognition) or methods of identifying alpha-numeric characters are difficult enough to implement. In a lot of cases they might be defeated by captchas(those things where you type numbers in a box to authenticate). Facial recognition programs are also known to have high failure rates, AFAIK. I can't imagine how difficult it may be to develop a scanner that might visually recognize health issues or abonormalities given how asymmetrical the structure of a person's body is....

I used to be a big fan of Michael Crichton & I think he mentioned a non-portable version of this type of technology(an automated diagnosis machine, not sure if thats the proper term) being developed and tested back when he was still involved with medicine, maybe back in the 1980's - 1990's(I think the title of the book was 'five patients'?).

Based on that, maybe it is possible and has been done before in a non-portable format. In which case it may be a mere means of miniturizing the technology. But, there's also a question of how financially attractive a market for such a device may be and how it differs from having EMT's or other assorted medical staff on the scene, etc....