IEEE Spectrum June, 2015 - 46

diagnostics

The race to
Build a realLife Tricorder
can The "sTar
Trek" healTh
scanner
become a
realiTy?

by evan ackerman

tatIana rypInskI Is mayBe tWo

bites into her salad when she
realizes it's time for her next meeting.
She gets to her feet and heads to the
Biomedical Engineering Design Studio, a hybrid of prototyping space, wet
lab, and machine shop at the Johns
hopkins University's homewood campus, in Baltimore. Rypinski and a few
of her colleagues gather near some
worktables with power outlets dangling from the ceiling. A tool cart is in
one corner, a microscope in another.
Two 3-D printers sit idle along a wall.
The students have agreed to meet me
here to discuss their work on a project
by the numbers

20.8 minutes
average time a u.s. doctor spends
with a patient in a consultation

jun 2015

north american

whose goal is not just inspired by science fiction-it actually comes straight
out of "Star Trek." They want to build
a medical tricorder.
In 1966, "Star Trek" introduced
the tricorder as, in essence, a plot
device. like the transporter, which
could "beam" people between starships and planets without asking the
audience to sit through lengthy landing sequences, the tricorder could rapidly diagnose medical conditions and
suggest treatments, keeping the story
moving. With a wave of this fictional
device, a Starfleet crew member could
get a comprehensive medical analysis
without having to be admitted to the
ship's sick bay.
here in the real world, though, if
you have a nonemergency situation,
you may wait days-weeks, in some
places-to see a physician. And if you
need laboratory tests, receiving a diagnosis can take even longer. A lot of waiting is involved, and waiting is the last
thing you want to do when you're sick.
It's even worse in the developing world,
where a shortage of medical facilities
and personnel means that seeing a doctor may not be an option at all. What
we need is a tricorder. A real one.
Rypinski is the leader of Aezon,
one of the teams participating in
the Qualcomm Tricorder XPrize.

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The competition launched in 2012,
when the XPrize Foundation and U.S.
chipmaker Qualcomm challenged
innovators from around the world
to develop a portable, consumerfriendly device capable of diagnosing a comprehensive set of medical
conditions. More than 300 teams registered, and after a series of reviews,
the organizers selected 10 finalists,
announced last August.
This month, the final phase of the
competition starts. Each finalist team
was expected to deliver 30 working
prototypes, which will now undergo
a battery of tests with real patients.
Prizes totaling US $10 million will
go to the winner and two runnersup, to be announced early next year,
when "Star Trek" will be celebrating
its 50th anniversary.
aezon Is the youngest fInalIst

team: All of its members are
undergraduates at hopkins. Some
have never even seen the original
"Star Trek" episodes. "My dad is a
huge fan, though," one student tells
me. For her part, Rypinski is unfazed.
"Th i s i s somet h i ng we're doi ng
because we love it," she says, "and I
think that sets us apart."
The other finalists include highprofile startups like Scanadu, in Silicon Valley, and well-funded medical
companies like DNA Medicine Institute, in Cambridge, Mass., which has
a partnership with NASA. Four teams
are based in the United States, and the
other six are from Canada, England,
India, Northern Ireland, Slovenia,
and Taiwan.
Thei r t r icorder s won't b e a l lpowerful portable scanners like those
in "Star Trek," but they still must demonstrate some impressive capabilities.
They'll have to diagnose 13 medical
conditions, including anemia, diabetes, hepatitis A, leukocytosis, pneumo-

StatiStic Source: 2010 NatioNal ambulatory medical care Survey, cdc

Part 1: Reading the Code

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum June, 2015