The Race To Build A Star Trek-Worthy Medical Tricorder | Hacker News Reader

The Race To Build A Star Trek-Worthy Medical Tricorder

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53 pointssdoering13 comments

The non-invasive restriction seems bad to me. Or is it there to get around government crated problems, which I could agree with?

I think the medical tricoder is completely non-invasive on TV, because it's a great way to create the fantasy of the future. As in, the doctor does not even need to touch you!

In the real world labs on chips have come quite far and could go even further. A scratch of skin or tiny droplet of blood could provide an incredible amount of information about your health.

So let's not artificially restrict what the device might be capable of, without good reason.

In fact I think the lab on chip type of analysis is the most interesting part. Measuring pulse, blood pressure, and respiration rate all seem pretty easily achievable.

I'd think that the non-invasive restriction is most likely related to the FDA's distinction between significant risk devices and non significant risk devices. In addition to traditional study approvals(Independent Review Board etc.), significant risk devices require FDA approval to begin testing for effectiveness (IDE applications) and are fraught with risk.

I don't remember offhand if finger-stick blood glucose testing devices are termed significant risk devices or if they are given exemptions. If these devices are given exemptions, then this would likely be a good precedent to follow to execute lab on a chip type devices.

I agree that the lab on a chip analysis represents the most exciting part of the implementation, but I also think that it would be interesting to see what types of associations we can get with usual metrics such as pulse, blood pressure, etc. when the data is more easily obtained.

Further information on significant and non-significant risk devices is available on the FDA website: http://www.fda.gov/MedicalDevices/DeviceRegulationandGuidanc...

Among other things, it would get around sanitation problems. By being non-invasive, there are less things that one has to worry about keeping perfectly clean, which is a good thing in the field.

People without medical training shouldn't be using a diagnostic tool that draws blood. Especially if there hasn't been several third-party (read: government) analyses showing that the tool sterilizes itself properly, even when not used by a skilled technician.

It takes only a small amount of training to safely use a blood glucose meter, which is a diagnostic tool that draws blood.

...And is a great vector for hepatitis infection:

http://diabetes.webmd.com/news/20111025/panel-recommends-hep...

I'm for a "no blood" tool at first at least. BGMs are cheap and prevalent.

That reminded me of something, I read a while ago:

http://quantifiedself.com/2011/08/nancy-dougherty-on-mindful...

OK, not Non-Intrusive, but quite interesting, I think.

If anyone is looking to hire in this area I have a friend who wrote his doctoral thesis on this subject. His research was focused on what diagnosis that can be established by shining infrared light on the skin and filming blood vessels up to one centimeter into the skin. I was at his thesis presentation and he literally referred to the Star Trek tricorder.

His thesis is on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/PHOTON-PROPAGATION-TISSUE-BIOLOGICAL-F...

This sounds interesting at first (I thought they must have some hardware kit for you), but I'm thinking 10 million isn't very much money for a 'tricorder' independently developed. If they were offering up some new qualcomm sensors or whatever, ok, but this just sounds like wishful thinking.

Probably be better if they did a Tricorder YC and gave a bunch of different teams a few thousand bucks to try and develop pieces of technology for something like this. Just a heart rate monitor for a phone would be amazing, and I mean one you could just point at someone, not a separate device. Extra wires just wouldn't make it a tricorder imho ;)

The competition page: http://www.qualcommtricorderxprize.org/

This is pretty cool but I have a feeling this might not be a great idea in the hands of hypochondriacs. Nonetheless as a Trekk{ie,er} I want one now ;p

Is anyone working on non medical tricoder type devices? It would be cool to have a gadget for my phone that gives me temperature, pressure, humidity and other things like that. It could potentially predict bad weather for climbers etc.

Remember that AT&T commerical that highlighted all the future stuff AT&T would do, but they never did, but eventually happened anyways. That's what this Scanadu promo video reminds me of. Check out their homepage too, it's all investors, board members, advisers, business people, and only a handful of engineers.

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