Finalists of the competition for the creation of a "Tricorder"
Selected finalists of the competition
to create a portable medical diagnostic device Tricorder XPrize
DailyTechInfo based on IEEE Spectrum: 10 Finalist Teams Announced for Tricorder XPrizeMany of our readers remember Dr. Leonard McCoy from the science fiction series "Star Trek", who had only to wave a specialized device called Tricorder over the patient's body and get a detailed medical diagnosis.
In principle, the level of development of modern technologies already allows us to create something similar, and recently ten teams of engineers were selected by the jury of the Tricorder XPrize competition in order to realize the idea of the Tricorder device in reality and make it accessible to a wide range of consumers.
Just a few days ago, the jury of the Tricorder XPrize competition organized by Qualcomm, within the framework of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS) conference, announced the selection of ten teams that will make it to the finals of this competition. Now each of these teams will have to work on creating a workable prototype of a portable device that will be able to diagnose at least 15 of the most common diseases and measure 5 basic vital signs of the human body.
Modern electronic devices can measure all the main indicators of the vital processes of the human body without much difficulty. A more difficult task is to make a diagnosis based on the collected data, because even the same disease can occur in different ways, and the indicators of different people can vary very significantly. But tricorders of the future generation should be able to confidently identify diseases such as diabetes, heart attack, pneumonia, tuberculosis, hepatitis of various types and a number of other most common diseases.
In general, at the EMBS conference, a lot was said about the development of healthcare technologies, about the trend of shifting the direction of diagnostic medicine from medical institutions to the patients themselves, about the creation of universal medical equipment with a lot of various sensors and developed analytical systems that will allow diagnosing diseases by patients themselves without the participation of physicians in this process. And the Tricorder XPrize contest very vividly expresses all the ideas voiced above, which is reflected in its motto: "Your health is in the palms of your own hands."
Among the finalist teams of the Tricorder XPrize competition are teams such as Scanadu from Silicon Valley and DMI from Boston, which have already made a name for themselves in this field. In general, the list of finalists is international, it includes many teams from India, Canada, Taiwan and other countries, including European ones.
The devices created by the finalist teams will be mainly evaluated on the accuracy of measuring indicators and diagnosing diseases. The jury will pay no less attention to the convenience and ease of use of these devices, which can be used by ordinary people who have nothing to do with medicine. The first stage of the final of the competition will be held in the second half of 2015, and in 2016 the last stage of the competition will be held, after which the prize of $ 10 million will be distributed among the three teams that took the first places.
Unfortunately, we should not expect that immediately after the competition, tricorder devices will be able to appear in every home medicine cabinet. It will take quite a long time to finalize these devices, to conduct their tests before they receive official approval and permission to start their mass production.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru01.09.2014