Officials with the Nokia Sensing X Challenge have announced the second grand prize winner in their competition—DNA Medicine Institute (DMI) has won for its cutting edge medical testing device, the rHEALTH X. The team has received $525,000 in prize money and an enormous amount of publicity and prestige.
The Reusable Handheld Electrolyte and Lab Technology for Humans (rHEALTH) X is a portable handheld device that can currently conduct up to 22 lab tests (up to the FDA gold standard) from a single drop of blood. In accepting the award, representatives with DMI said that while winning the prize is great, their real objective is to bring modern medicine to the billions of people who currently have little access to medical care.
The lab tests done by the X run the gamut, from tox screening, to looking for signals in the blood that indicate diseases, to discovering the presence of viruses, such as flu or Ebola. To allow for testing with such a small device, the researchers developed new technology to test blood samples–it relies on nanotechnology and optics. The testing surface is seeded with many nano-sized test strips, each of which mix with and soak up material found in the blood. Each strip is then lined up and passed in front of a laser which is used to determine what material is in it. Findings are stored and displayed, allowing non-medically trained people to make their own diagnoses. The device also comes with a Bluetooth enabled patch to be applied to the skin which can provide respiration, heart rate etc. to a person on their smartphone.
http://phys.org/news/2014-11-dmi-nokia-handheld-medical-device.html
[More Info]: http://sensing.xprize.org/press-release/dmi-wins-nokia-sensing-xchallenge-sensor-runs-hundreds-of-lab-tests-single
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday November 14 2014, @05:05PM
I wouldn't be so sure of that. In fact, I'd say it's provable false. There are already multiple [dailytech.com] examples [infowars.com] of police conducting blood tests on passing motorists at traffic checkpoints.
At the moment these *usually* require a search warrant. Which is why they have a judge at the checkpoint, to immediately issue a warrant for anyone who refuses to provide a blood sample voluntarily.
You're the first person I've seen who's ever raised the issue of legal liability for a medial procedure. Police don't consider it a medical procedure, they consider it a search and seizure.