$10m Prize Offered for Tricorder

Published on Thursday, 12 January 2012 16:15

	By Gregg Bayes-Brown Follow @ATE_Gregg

Ever dreamt of a real life teleporter? How about breaching warp speed? Or running riot in a holodeck? Don’t worry, dirty trekkie, you are not alone.

In fact, Qualcomm and the X-Prize Foundation are so adamant that they want a tricorder, they have put up $10 million (£6.5m) of their own money for the first person to put the fully functional Trek medical scanner in front of them.

The gauntlet was thrown down to budding inventors at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Dubbed the Qualcomm Tricorder X-Prize, the competition’s challenge is to build a device that weighs less than 2.2 Kgs, and is capable of capturing “key health metrics and diagnosing a set of 15 diseases”.

Commenting on the announcement of the prize, X Prize Foundation Chairman Peter Diamandis said, “I'm probably the first guy who's here in Vegas who would be happy to lose $10m”.

Mr Diamandis hopes that by creating the prize, the competition will kick-start a new wave of medical ingenuity that will revolutionise healthcare.

The device, if and when it becomes a reality, would have the ability to “diagnose patients better than or equal to a panel of board certified physicians”, and would be usable by the average man on the street.

"It's not a single point solution. What we're looking for is to launch a new industry,” said Mr Diamandis. “The tricorder that was used by Spock and Bones inspires a vision of what healthcare will be like in the future.”

Speaking about the device itself, he said it should, “be wireless, mobile and minimally- or non-invasive.

"It may use digital imaging, it may be sequencing your DNA on the spot to tell you if you are allergic to something you just ate."

Currently, the iconic Star Trek tool is a long way from the production line. While some of the technology to design one exists, putting it into practise will require a vast step forward in our understanding of the technology, and our ability to miniaturise it.

Speaking to the BBC, Professor Jeremy Nicholson commented on the award, and the hurdles potential researchers would have to overcome.

"The challenges are: What is it you detect, what are the samples you can get and how do you put it all together in one gizmo?

"The most likely sort of technology would be something that detects metabolites.

"What we use in our laboratory is big - the size of a Mini. The challenge is sticking it all into one device."

Prof. Nicholson doubted that anyone would be claiming the prize anytime soon, but applauded the prize for stimulating innovation.

However, such miniaturised technology is hardly out of Mankind’s reach. Just ask an iPhone user. Nor is this the first time that the X-Prize has led to a technological breakthrough.

Back in 2004, the Ansari X-Prize for a privately funded reusable spacecraft was claimed by the team behind SpaceShipOne. The research from that project would ultimately lead to Richard Branson’s dream of offering the first commercial flights into space via Virgin Galactic a reality.

While the first flight is a year or so off, the technology used for SpaceShipOne was enough for Branson to build SpaceShipTwo and to commission the world’s first SpacePort, which opened in late 2011.

Personally, we’re still holding out for the X-Prize to design a lightsaber.