I view the article differently (although I agree it is a learning tool): I see it as showing yet another example of what I think of as Silicon Valley hubris.

I've spent about 15 years in research on colloidal nanoparticles, much of that for biological applications of magnetic and fluorescent nanoparticles. There are countless barriers to creating the proposed "tricorder", each significant enough that overcoming even a single one would make one a "made man" in academia, e.g., "solving" RES uptake.

Look at this statement from the article, for one example of what I see as hubris,

    "The particles were so safe, [Conrad] said, that animal testing could be skipped."

This statement contradicts advisory statements by the FDA, guidelines issued by the FDA, the general understanding of the frameworks put forward by the NNI (National Nanotechnolgy Initiative), general trends in the field, and (regulatory) common sense. This "tricorder" would be a combination of a hardware diagnostic platform, a pharmaceutical contrast agent, and some sort of software platform: it doesn't get any more complicated than that. It would take months for the FDA to figure out how to regulate this device. I am completely unable to conceive how anyone with any experience in this area could think that animal testing could be skipped.

Also, your statement that we should "positively reinforce the fact that they had the fucking balls to try" reads to me as if you are unaware that there are many of us in the biomedical world trying, very hard, fighting over scraps of funding and trying to move the ball down the field. We just aren't in the public eye or consciousness. It hurts to see a group like Verily get celebrated for trying when the rest of us get ignored (or worse, dismissed) when we're working on some pretty challenging stuff under some lousy conditions.