High Prize On Offer for Star Trek Type Medical Device
To encourage the design and build of such an innovative gadget a prize of ten million dollars (£6.5m) is up for grabs courtesy of The Qualcomm Foundation. This was announced during last week’s Las Vegas-centred Consumer Electronics Show.
The Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize challenges scientists to build a portable device that can detect key health measurements and is able to diagnose a list of 15 diseases and must not exceed 5lb (2.2kg).
The official Star Trek technical manual defines a tricorder as a portable ‘sensing, computing and data communications device’.
That very device attracted the attention of the cult show’s many fans when it first appeared on TV screens in Star Trek in 1966. The futuristic series had Dr McCoy, the on-board medic, applying the tricorder to determine a disease merely by scanning an individual’s body.
The organisers of the award are optimistic that the high prize stake may be the inspiration for an entrepreneurial engineer to figure out the sci fi gadget’s secret, thereby creating medical fact from science fiction.
Although the tricorder has its roots in science fiction previous X Prizes have indeed become realities such as the 2004 Ansari X Prize, for a privately-funded, reusable spacecraft, being awarded to the inventors of SpaceShipOne, duly taken up by Virgin Galactic.
Talking to the BBC, Professor Jeremy Nicholson, of Imperial College London said that medical devices which trace chemical signs to assist in diagnosis are already in existence; he cautioned that developing a piece of equipment to mimic the tricorder would be extremely challenging.
He explained that modern laboratory equipment is the size of a small car, and the challenging bit would be incorporating everything into one smaller-sized, sampling and detecting gizmo.
But though he thinks the challenge of this prize could help to produce ground breaking ideas, he doubts the prize would be claimed in the very near future and further said that if any suitable device were to be made, a lengthy period of statutory testing and approval for medical use would be required.
Mr Diamandis, on the other hand, is optimistic that the existence of the prize may assist in transforming healthcare and have the potential to launch a new industry.
He added that he would probably be the first person ever who would be pleased to lose $10m in Sin City.
