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The development of a "Star Trek" tricorder-style medical device, similar to this NASA mockup, may be worth a $10 million prize.
A real-life diagnostic device that does something akin to what the tricorder did on "Star Trek" just might earn its developers $10 million prize. And yes, the proposed competition is actually being called the Tricorder X Prize. It's just one more example of life imitating "Trek." In the words of Mr. Spock: Fascinating!
The objective of the project, currently being explored by the X Prize Foundation and Qualcomm, is not just to create one more cool gadget for "Trek" fans ... although the idea of a hand-held, automated medical diagnostic device is pretty cool. The objective is to extend the reach of health information and services to billions more people in the world.
"We believe this is a fundamental step in helping people become true 'health consumers' who can have as much say in assessing and accessing health care as they would any other service or product," Don Jones, vice president of wireless health strategy and market development at Qualcomm Labs, said in this week's announcement about the project. "Qualcomm believes the value of this X Prize is also in changing the cost structure and focus of health care. By having consumers take the initial actions to obtain health assessment data, the use and the quality of physicians' time is improved."
The competition is modeled on earlier incentive programs such as the $10 million Ansari X Prize for private-sector spaceflight, or the $10 million Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize for super-efficient road vehicles. The basic idea is to encourage the development of mobile devices that can diagnose patients at least as well as a panel of board-certified physicians.
"The goal obviously is to drive a lot of innovation toward this narrow goal of easy-to-use, low-cost, minimally invasive, rapid, portable and scalable diagnosis," Jones told me during a follow-up interview.
Over the next few months, Qualcomm and the X Prize Foundation will be working together to flesh out the rules and requirements for the Tricorder X Prize. Jones emphasized that this is just the "design phase" for the venture. Qualcomm isn't yet committed to putting up any prize money, but it does have "the option of funding part or all of the prize," he said.
If the design phase is successful, the competition would begin in early 2012.
So what's in it for Qualcomm, a company that focuses on wireless network technology? "Qualcomm has a wireless health effort, we've had it for some time, and we believe there is a real interest to tie together the world of sensors and the world of informatics," Jones told me. "We're very interested in connecting more items to the cellular-powered Internet, and this is a category of items. Perhaps many categories of items will come out of this."
There are already a goodly number of mobile medical devices out there, including some pretty fancy hand-held ultrasound imagers. Three years ago, researchers at the University of California at Berkeley demonstrated a portable medical scanner that could be hooked up to a mobile phone to create a tricorder-like diagnostic system. But Jones said he thought the device that won the Tricorder X Prize would have to hit a higher level of sophistication — in effect, telling users on the spot whether they should go see a professional.
The tricorder might have to check not only ultrasound readings, but heart rate, respiration, perspiration, salivation and other health indicators. "It's fairly clear that a prizewinner is going to have to figure out how to integrate multiple sensing technologies, using multiple databases," Jones said.
Can one device do it all ... and make those cool "Star Trek" noises as well? Share your thoughts in the comment section below, and stay tuned for future episodes.
More about 'Trek' medical tech:
- Ex-astronaut aims to build tricorders
- Researchers use phones to detect cancers
- Health-oriented smartphone apps draw caution
- The doctor will see you now ... on the space shuttle
Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," Alan's book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
Leave a Comment:
What a great idea! Really! Our own personal diagnosis system? Not the least to find out what the matter is with you, but a possible way to fight the HMOs challenging all our doctor's recommendations.
The future holds many possibilities. Republicans may want to extend retirement to 105...but this is not a political forum for discussion. Mea Culpa.
Let's embrace the possibilities of a new technology. America can do it!!
Don't let hyperbole get in your way of reality.... there are Republicans on the board of trustees of the Xprize along with Democrats.
And if people's life spans were raised to well above 100 years old (Maybe in the 140-150 range), you would see retirement age going up. That's common sense man.... as long as those 100 year olds are like today's 65 year olds in health.
That's the [problem with everything. Everyone believes that they need to align themselves (regardless of true beliefs) to a political party. What ever happened to helping people for the goodness to humanity. Maybe that is the TRUE motivation!
Helping ppl for the good of Humanity? Like patented wheat & protecting "intellectual property" at the expense of freedom of information? Nice that somebody our there wants to digitize our health profiles so a corporation can tell ya what's ailing you - but a lot more lives would be saved if they just stopped screwing up...
It is an outstanding idea. In deep space, radiation levels will be very dangerous to humans. Tricorder can improve wound healing and enhance quality of life for space travelers during long journeys. http://bit.ly/mwuHzZ
Live long and prosper!
I can picture a small tablet type device that has a standard grip pads that can sense heart rate, with a small finger tab diabetic like blood tester at the thumb positon that with the right sensors should be able to check for diabetic alerts, but also temperture and just about anything else that a drop of blood can tell you. I could see the tech being individualized atleast at first so it can track indivdiual conditons over time so radical changes could be reported. So older patients it could literally be like being linked to monitors at a hospital that they carry around with a phone home feature if something drastic happens. Eventually once widely implimented and advanced by tech gains the actual tricorder like device would actually happen but it would be pulling past histories from cloud computing. I couldn't build it myself as I don't really have the knowledge but I can see how it could really become a state of the art tool in everyones hands. I could see doctors asking nurses if the patient came in with his Medicorder. Instant diagnostic and patient histories today would be a benefit let alone the rest.
I was all set to lamblast the competition for not advertising it enough since I had not heard of it...good thing I read past the headline...hehe...I like the idea, of course, I hope they are not stacking the deck, or that qualcomm is not just hinting that they want people with cool gadget ideas for cellphones to call them first...rather I hope it is an all out public competition and not closed to institutions and the inventor(s) get to keep all rights and title....with all that it kinda makes me wonder why they would want to give away ten mill?...what would be in it for them? a tax break?...there are already a couple of tricorder type ideas out there in the med community, I wonder if they are viable contenders, pre-selected winners, or just not of any concern?...still the idea is a good idea, I hope qualcomm and or whomever is willing to toss the competition out there moves forward with it....let us not forget one of the grandest competitions ever was for a better navigation system for ships..all those centuries ago...and it paid off handsomely for her majestys navel service!!.....as well, ole spock was no doc, the tricorder of his day seemed to do quite a lot, were'nt the first ones about the size of a smallish late 1960's vintage sony tape recorder with a shoulder strap?...thats what it looked like to me in the first episodes...let's see, antimatter detector, gamma detector beta detector alpha detector, ohh....sorry thinking aloud there....anyways miniturization has come a long way and the atom, arm and eden processors (to mention only a few) coupled with flash drives could very well have more processing power in your palm than even the original treks imagined!!.....the detectors on the other hand, well thats the challange I guess, our current tech now can very well have speech cognition, ai and 3d displays...thats great...on the other hand, I really do see a hand held ICP plasma spectrometer as puzzzle, let alone tossing in a ramen spectrograph alongside it, leaving a few square cm's for the NMR and gas chromatagraph.......this is gonna take more than a few cups of coffee to get off the drawing board. Do I really have to throw an antimatter spin reference anomolator in with it captain? cause if not you could have it before we reach beta alpha 5, assuming data downloads the entire known reference work from the borg collective before next friday, that is.....oh, and captain, you better stay off the holodecks for a while, engineering's gonna be needing all of em.....
Who's going to buy these things? I don't see them being cheap by any stretch of the imagination, nor would they be very portable. I could maybe see some business like a drugstore pharmacy putting them in service like is commonplace with blood pressure screenings, but I doubt such a thing would be in many household medicine cabinets.
who could afford vcr's when they first came out for multiple thousands of dollars, and now you can buy a dvd player for $20 bucks
The first to buy them would probably be the U.S. military and medical agencies who perform services in areas that lack resources to support more elaborate equipment. Both are in dire need of the ability to quickly and efficiently ascertain a patient's condition in the field. As the price comes down, the next would probably be for small clinics and paramedics. Doctors could prescribe their use by caregivers for at-risk outpatients. They would eventually become as common as electronic thermometers.
Probably the closest thing I've seen to a gizmo like this was on loan from a hospital to an elderly uncle who had just suffered a stroke due to congestive heart failure. It had a scale to take weight measurements, and a cuff to check blood pressure along with some finger thimble for blood oxygen and pulse all hooked up to a phone line. A prerecorded voice would give instructions to follow, take measurements and then a computer modem would dial a phone line out to the hospital with the information. With the involvement of Qualcomm (a wireless service provider) they're probably looking at something along those same lines but without a need for any telephone, or maybe a bluetooth-like connection to a cell phone service because about half of Americans don't have hardwired telephones anymore. The gadgetry involved probably won't look much like a tricorder though because at minimum there's going to be a scale and a blood pressure test unit. It may be the size of a suitcase but probably not much smaller than that.
I disagree with you MeanGene but you do bring up a good point. The portability issue is moot because that is the contest. It must be portable or it is not a Tricorder. It is up to the math/computer geniuses to get as much useful health information from the multiple scans that an instrument the size of a Tricorder can produce. The good point you made is what are the things it will be able to ascertain? Will it be able to do the basics like height and weight based on the amount of mass and the dimensions it scans? Will it be able to check blood oxygen and give you your blood pressure? I don't know. It will be able to tell a person if his arm was busted or not, or if you were bleeding internally. Things of that nature. Maybe it will be able to detect viruses, or early stages of cancer? Lots of possibilities.
some great stuff coming....IF, humanity can just keep from killing itself off for a while longer
I agree with stevef...we can do some amazing things, if only we can keep from being killed off. After the tricorder, we need to make the Autodoc so everyone can get medical help anywhere. Just so long as the machine doesn't say, "He's dead, Jim."
Apple will do it ... it will be called the I-Corder !!!
Or, if it is designed to offer a preliminary diagnosis of some problems, it could be called the I-ThoughtSo.
No, then it would be called the iCorder (no hyphen).....and then you'd have to get your diagnosis & Apple approved remedies though iTunes (complete with Apple margin tax ontop of what paid to the actual sources).
Since when was the tricorder only so medical diagnosis centric? On TOS (original Trek) it was as much if not more so an enviromental and information accessing instrument used by Spock & other landing party members. Tri sure meant multifunction. Surely these too are application goals that should be exploited. The medical scanner waved about over a patient (or corpse) was about the size of a C-cell (remember those?) and/or salt shaker. That kind of acessory could prove useful too - especially with the real world context of networked more powerful resources to communicate with.
Well, regardless of what it does...Apple will still do it. Just look at the original iPod, now we have an iPhone which does much more than just three thing...
Will they include a transporter? Because that would be totally BA!
Will it be able to translate non-human languages like Klingon?
Can it detect bad Romulan Ale and shape shifters from the Gamma Quadrant?
Will it be able to reboot offline andriods?
A tricorder needs to be more than a medical device. It should analyze air for toxins that cause asthma and respiratory ailments, water for pollution that contaminates our fish and drinking water and the food itself to see how much mercury that fish sandwich is delivering and how much sugar and salt make it tasty.
It should “see” what causes medical conditions as well as diagnosing the symptoms.
The problem is, it's based on wireless technology, which has been recently demonstrated as one of the root causes why pollinating insect (like bees) have been dying off. What's the use of wireless medical scanners if the humans have starved to death?
Norman, you may be right; then again, I have seen so many studies recently that proved and/or disproved so many things, and many of those studies contradict each other or earlier studies. Too many studies appear to 'prove' whatever the sponsor wanted to prove, in the first place. All new technologies, like most foods, have their detractors, who will find a study to prove that they will harm you- thus reducing the value of the valid studies.
Gene Roddenberry was and still is my hero !!!!!!!!!!
I agree; I've liked Star Trek since I saw it first, in the '60s. I have to admit that I find parts of his vision of the future unlikely, but I like his better than I like mine. Well, all but that bit about World War 3...
Yes some of those were meant to scare us............maybe it did, somewhere deep in the pentagon or the Kremlin......who knows
All I know is roddenberry was 100+++ years ahead of his time
I totally agree! I was born and nurtured on Star Trek, and I still enjoy it a lot!
dont we have that already? isnt it a smart phone??
The real problem is going to be finding samother earth before the mind transfer tech.....trust me...
We have found one already,...whe we reach the singularity, everyone that is not part of the 1st world will go off world....
Thatcmeans like 5 billion people...itsmintended to prevent emvironmentalcdegredatiom, you must understand. As a us citizen, we won't have a problem.
But ocne everyone can have a mansion due to robotics and asteroid mining. Once technology can prolong life indefinitely without identity merger...once, you can travel to any ecologicalcwonder....
We will have problems....when things cost zero, we will have problems with those of extreme poverty. They will want it too.
Instead of going to communism and "sharing" resources to the point they become unenjoyable...we will simply transport them to another planet, improve them genetically, and form a stasis environment as here on earth,.....
Once we reduce on earth and tiberia to 3.5 billion, it is sustainable...and we can create more natural habitats with robotics....
But we simply can't have overpopulation and vastly advanced technology...thats one of the projects at area 51, the setting up of the other planet. Due to our backwards political system,chat is unlikely to change but works for perfection ascthe illuminati have dedigned it, we cannot let the passion of people determine our fate at the "turning" point. That's why the aliens are instrumental, nice the protocal is enacted,cno political bulk@!$%# will exist and we will go into a sort of robotic meritocratic communism but where we have everything we want and need,..there won't be many vectors of need after that...
Only those at the top that want to coerse the fate of humanity inr way or the other...the protocal is intended to discourage these forces at the turning point, leading to a sort of enlightened libertarianism, and having humanity live In bliss thereafter..then the mind transfer stage will come about, necessitating different priorities.
But yea, the main problem won't be water, or technology...it will be the gap of access, and the demand that will increase from such technology on the existing resources....that's where the spoke teleporter comes in.
We arnt going to let humanity go about it's way based on passion. No, that is simply unacceptable.
Yes,,...we arnt going to allow you morons f it up. That's correct.
collectivist policycwilll be securitycand human rights....everything else...will be verycvery libertarian,..incp fact, Islam might be quite strong during the merger,cand the libertarian truce may allow for a larger than normal Muslim population hsd thingsncontinues onvthenpathvof either progressivism or materialism.
Libertarianism will ne the name of the game.cwhen it comes to security? Totalitarian collectivism. As long as you stay away from security items....or try to coers libertarian free choice society,,,you are fine....you try to coerse, you try to build a bomb.....that's whencyou go to prison....the totalitarian society.
Everthing you could ever want or need will exist...and every societyvimaigmsble, will exist...it will be your choice ipwhere youcgo, and where youclive, fitting society to your need.s..
But due the inherent nature of subconscious neural network robotics......most of the idea behind Marxism and capitalismcwillcfall by thr wayside.....they will become obsolete..After wall, nice you can build things for relatively nothing, the normal rules of economics fall by the wayside.....it will be more about social mores, than anything else....
Peoplemwill reach self fulfillment invthat society through self improvement.....understanding, like in academics, entertainment (some societies may choose hedonism, so be it), and the accomplishment of goals....in many ways a liberal academic environment, before mind transfer,where the normal rules of the game don't apply.
However, before his tricorder age, basically the time we will be alive....it will be the century of "disasters" as the aliens put it...
Technology will advance, marterialism will feed Intocthat and prosperity, but it will mean a lot of spiritual suffering before the singularity. A much more competetive and utilitarian society willccome about, and more capitalist,clearing to more technological advances from a the global market. But values will disappear, and people will be less happy because everything willcbe so open.
During thisnperiod there will also. Be many disasters, natural and otherwise, those crested bycus willcmainly have to do with resources and standards of living, as well as fast market bubbles...generating fast economic collapses and then surges...america will be powerful, but nit as powerful as it once was...america won't be socmuchcfalling behind, as the world willcbe catching up and becoming one large cultural materialistic hive mind...
That's our future...I was speaking above ofmthem tricorder era that follows ours which isnsuooosed to be much more spiritual...
But by many measures we won't be living a pie in the sky world where everything is dome for us...on the contrary...we will be forced to build it with sweat, blood, and suffering......through grit....even if we don't realize it,,,.,through the competetive nature of materialistic utilitarian capitalism.
We are working for the future, but we don't even know it,
I wouldn't let Apple do any of the coding what-so-ever due to all of the virus problem's with the I-Pod your Tri-Corder might tell you that your left thumb is located near your foot.
Great idea though. More innovation leads to more lives being saved and humans living longer to enjoy what the future has to offer.
where is the transporters? bet ya that would solve all over fuel consumption problems..o i forgot speculators,oil companies,they would not like them to much now that i thing of it!!!
If someone did develop transporter technology, it would consume a fair amount of energy. Energy companies would still be able to provide the energy for that purpose. In Star Trek, they had anti-matter conversion to provide outrageous amounts of energy for anything they wanted to do. And, no, we don't yet have any sources of sufficient anti-matter to be an energy source.
Even then... I doubt the transporter would use oil. I bet it would use clean Nuclear power or hydrogen fusion, something like that.
sorry for the spelling,still waking up...
It would be much easier to have it argue a law case to the Supreme Court better than a panel of top attorneys.
And it would be trivial to build one that could read proposed legislation better than a quorum of congressmen.
Unless the device is proven to be 100% accurate then it must always indicate that the user "needs to seek professional diagnosis". Otherwise it is merely liability bait.
Diabetic glucose monitors are proven to be rather accurate, there is no need to visit a professional to verify the readings and the products are a staple seller. This "tricorder" concept would need to be as respected as that for all it's applications. Otherwise just a fancy toy.
Does it make the neat whistling sound when it is diagnosing a patient?
And does it come with a diagnostic scanner that looks suspiciously like a salt shaker?