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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday April 16 2017, @08:10AM   Printer-friendly
from the I'm-a-doctor-not-a-tricorder dept.

Submitted via IRC for Cmn32480

Oscar Wilde once said that life imitates art, and science and engineering is often no exception to this. Science fiction certainly provides science types with plenty of inspiration for inventions, including holograms, teleportation, and even sonic screwdrivers.

Star Trek's all-purpose medical device, the Tricorder, has also inspired a fair few people to recreate its near-magical ability to instantly diagnose a patient. As it happens, the non-profit X-Prize Foundation were so keen to get one invented that they started a global competition to see if any mavericks would succeed.

Rather remarkably, one team has emerged victorious in their endeavor. A family-led team from Pennsylvania, appropriately named Final Frontier Medical Devices, have bagged themselves a sum of $2.5 million, with a second-place prize of $1 million going to the Taiwan-based Dynamical Biomarkers Group.

The objective of the Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE competition was to create a lightweight, non-invasive, handheld device that can identify 13 health conditions (12 diseases, and the very absence of disease) in 90 minutes to 24 hours with no additional help or counsel from medical professionals. Five vital health metrics, like heartbeat and respiratory function, were also required to be constantly monitored.

Source: IFLScience!


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by wonkey_monkey on Sunday April 16 2017, @11:52AM (2 children)

    by wonkey_monkey (279) on Sunday April 16 2017, @11:52AM (#494780) Homepage

    can identify 13 health conditions (12 diseases, and the very absence of disease)

    I assume that means the very absence of any of the 12 specific diseases (the article says "absence of conditions").

    Sounds a bit of a cheat to call an absence a 13th "health condition." Why not say it can identify 4096 conditions, that is to say each combination of 12 diseases?

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  • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday April 17 2017, @08:47AM (1 child)

    by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Monday April 17 2017, @08:47AM (#495165) Homepage
    unless the 12 are ranked by seriousness, and this device only tells you the most serious one you have. One of the 12, or none = 13.
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    • (Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Monday April 17 2017, @09:44AM

      by wonkey_monkey (279) on Monday April 17 2017, @09:44AM (#495189) Homepage

      Shows you the most serious, needs an in-app payment to show the rest.

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      systemd is Roko's Basilisk