X Prize Foundation Offers $10 Million for Medical Tricorder

[Tom Goldman]

X Prize Foundation Offers $10 Million for Medical Tricorder

The race is on to develop a highly-advanced medical diagnosis device like that seen on Star Trek.

Star Trek [http://www.amazon.com/Star-Trek-Original-Season-Remastered/dp/B000VDDDY6/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&qid=1305392890&sr=8-13]'s tricorders are wondrous devices that can do anything from detecting radiation to determining the cause of death of a red shirt. The X Prize Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing humanity through radical breakthroughs fostered by competition, has announced that it wants the medical version of a tricorder to exist someday, and is therefore offering $10 million for it.

Previous X Prize competitions have challenged private entities to develop spaceflight vehicles, oil cleanup methods, and advanced genome sequencing techniques. The latest, dubbed the Tricorder X Prize, will reward $10 million to a team that can develop a "mobile solution that can diagnose patients better than or equal to a panel of board certified physicians." In other words, a form of medical tricorder that can accurately diagnose the sick and injured.

Such a device is predicted to arise from "combining advancements in expert systems and medical point of care data such as wireless sensors, advancements in medical imaging and microfluidics," a press release states. If someone owns one of these "mobile solutions," they'll be able to diagnose themselves quickly should an emergency arise, easily determining whether professional help is necessary.

Giving the general population access to a mass of accurate health-related information could not only help save lives, but ease the burden on healthcare systems around the world. It'd be much less worry-inducing than googling for "bump on toe" and being scared into thinking you have scarlet fever, that's for sure.

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[manythings]

I wonder how often the word "lightsabre" appears in the minutes for their meetings...

OT: I bet one could be invented tomorrow and no one would ever know about it. Cat Scans are insanely lucrative.

 

[Fasckira]

I think bonus cash needs to be awarded if they get it to make the same sounds as the ST one too

 

[justcallmeslow]

That's gotta be worth a whole lot more than $10 million...

(also, won't be happening for a long time)

 

[Ren3004]

This doesn't seem very feasible. Maybe for a handful of diseases, but the amount of stuff doctors have to look for when examining a patient, plus the need for additional exams is too much to be done by a small portable device.

EDIT: One of my teachers told us a story like this, where a prize was offered to whomever invented a test for Chlamydia that had high sensibility and sensitivity, took no longer than half an hour to give a result and could also be learned to use in less than half an hour. To this day, no one has managed to claim the prize.

 

[Cousin_IT]

I shall enter this competition & submit an tablet with WebMD on it. I win?

 

[CrystalShadow]

Heh. Well, I wouldn't know where to begin trying to devise a medical tricorder.

I've thought about the more generic variety a lot though; It'd be easy enough to create a very rudimentary version just by considering that a typical digital camera sensor if left without filters, can detect wavelengths of light from the near infrared into the UV spectrum.

Combine a few such sensors with filters for different wavelengths, a sensor configured as a digital spectrometer (they exist already), possibly some radiation detectors if you can make them small enough...
And combine it with a large amount of specialist data processing, and you have, in essence, a tricorder.

A medical model seems a little trickier to put together though, because the information you'd need to gather doesn't seem that simple to obtain.
MRI & CAT scans require bulky equipment at the moment, not to mention that an X-ray based system poses health risks in itself that you wouldn't want to expose people to without some degree of supervision...

 

[Thaluikhain]

They can offer whatever they want, they aren't going to have to pay in teh forseeable future.

 

[Dirkie]

The only feasable thing i can come up with is something that can accurately determine the cause of death, even at 1 mile+ distances.

Spoiler

but that would be a sniper rifle, not a medical tricorder

 

[omicron1]

I suggest a one-way video/audio communication system hooked up to said aforementioned panel of doctors, with a text output for them to write their official diagnosis. Just as good as sneaking a human through a Turing test!

 

[Condor219]

We need Portal Gun X Prize. Now.

 

[teebeeohh]

i can already see the headlines:
"medical tricorder is a reality,
buy your now and save HUGE on health care"
in other news
"a wave of suicides has struck the nations medical practices"

 

[Wieke]

7 million euros is a bit measly for such an achievement. Hell miniaturizing only one of the many sensor systems that would be involved (fMRI that fits in the palm of your hand?) would be worth billions.

 

[tychothereborn]

10 mill seems kinda small for something that could completely revolutionize the medical industry think of how many x ray machines and other equipment would be replaced with one device.

 

[Alpha Maeko]

He's dead, Jim.

 

[Exterminas]

Shouldn't this be quite easy to pull off?

I mean, all doctors do is to ask questions and check other variables (blood values etc). So I guess you could probably cover 90% or all diseases with a more or less complex algorythm.

The real problem probably lies in minimizing all the equipment needed to run tests into a portable format.

 

[JET1971]

10 million prize and billions off the patent. would make someone very very rich.

 

[ChocoFace]

If i had something like the medical tricorder, $10 million would be pocket change.
Less than that, even.

In reality, i could at best create a small box with a picture of a healthy old guy, both thumbs up in the air, smiling, with a text "it's probably nothing."

 

[TimeLord]

I shall enter this competition & submit an tablet with WebMD on it. I win?

Ironically, I bet the actual entries won't be much different!

 

[samsonguy920]

Would it get credit if it at least determines it is not lupis?