Last week Qualcomm's Tricorder XPrize quest, launched in 2012, came to an end. A team of scientists and engineers from Pennsylvania-based Final Frontier Medical Devices won the biggest chunk of the $10 million prize fund ($2.5 million) with their DxtER machine. Runners up collecting $1 million were Taiwan's Dynamical Biomarkers Group, backed by HTC. Both these teams won an additional $1 million last year, just for being finalists.
The purpose of the Qualcomm Tricorder XPrize was to inspire inventors to create a medical device similar in function to the Star Trek Tricorder. Some say Star Trek tech has already inspired flip phones and iPads, but the Tricorder was potentially the most useful practical portable tool wielded by the space adventurers upon the USS Enterprise.
Qualcomm asked competitors to develop a handy device that monitors and diagnoses health conditions, allowing unprecedented access to personal health metrics. The winning team had to meet the following criteria:
"The winning team will develop a Tricorder device that will accurately diagnose 13 health conditions (12 diseases and the absence of conditions) and capture five real-time health vital signs, independent of a health care worker or facility, and in a way that provides a compelling consumer experience."
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Core set of medical conditions: |
Elective Set of medical conditions: |
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In a blog post about the winners, Qualcomm says that the winning devices exceeded the competition requirements for user experience. However, both top placed devices failed to meet the "challenging audacious benchmarks for diagnosing the 13 disease states". So these devices are evidence of significant steps in portable healthcare, but as admitted prototypes they are still moonshoot projects that require further time for refinement.
Sci-Fi fans might also be slightly disappointed that real-life Tricorders aren't as 'magical' as the Star Trek devices. Some competition devices required a blood or urine sample, for example. Nevertheless such devices have the potential for allowing medical diagnosis where otherwise health issues might get untreated due to lack of trained doctors, for example.
