Damn it, Jim, I'm a doctor not a...oh! Right!
December 15, 2016 1:12 PM   Subscribe

Seeker.com: "Two Star Trek 'Tricorders' Have Made It to the Final Round of XPRIZE. This week, Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE officials announced that two teams of finalists have made it to the last round of the competition, having designed tricorder-style medical devices that are actually pretty space-age in look and function. Weighing in at less that five pounds each, the devices can diagnose and interpret 13 different health conditions within minutes, while continuously monitoring five different vital sign metrics."

Wikipedia: "In the fictional Star Trek universe, a tricorder is a multifunction hand-held device used for sensor scanning, data analysis, and recording data."
posted by Celsius1414 (27 comments total) 13 users marked this as a favorite
 
*raises an eyebrow*

Fascinating.
posted by SansPoint at 1:33 PM on December 15, 2016 [21 favorites]


Up until now, I was happy that I found my Dad's old Star Trek Technical Manual when I was over at the parents last weekend.

Still don't understand why it vaguely smells of patchouli.
posted by Sphinx at 1:59 PM on December 15, 2016 [1 favorite]


Still don't understand why it vaguely smells of patchouli.

That's just how the 70's smelled.
posted by humboldt32 at 2:12 PM on December 15, 2016 [13 favorites]


Ok, so we've got communicators, tricorders, we're on the way to replicators. When do i get my post-scarcity socialist utopia?
posted by threecheesetrees at 2:12 PM on December 15, 2016 [11 favorites]


BTW, my USS Enterprise Blueprint Set smells slightly of sandalwood.
posted by humboldt32 at 2:13 PM on December 15, 2016


From the contest site: "Metrics for health could include such elements as blood pressure, respiratory rate..."

Hahahaha. I take vital signs all day (EMT) and taking a blood pressure without touching a patient using just a smart device is total bs.
posted by not_the_water at 2:21 PM on December 15, 2016 [6 favorites]


That's just how the 70's smelled.

I think I made Mom angry when I said that. I thought it was just me.
posted by Sphinx at 2:26 PM on December 15, 2016 [1 favorite]


Looking at the images of the kits on the linked site, I don't think this is your star trek tricorder but a simple suite of components that a non medical professional should be able to use. So yeah, physically interacting with the patient to take blood pressure is necessary I'd guess. The swishest looking one seems to be a bunch of small devices in drawers around a box that acts as both a dock and a charger all using bluetooth to feed data back to a phone (HTC in this case).
posted by diziet at 2:34 PM on December 15, 2016 [2 favorites]


"I'm not getting a blood pressure reading, but the Pogostemon cablin sensor just melted!"
posted by Celsius1414 at 2:39 PM on December 15, 2016


Looks like they've set the bar too low in the rules if these devices qualify as medical tricorders. The first one is a chest of drawers full of things you will forget to put back, and the second might as well come with all the dongles pre-lost. Did they each start with one dongle and then the Tribble effect kicked in?
This needs to be one single unit no bigger than a box of chocolates with maybe one or more pieces you can temporarily detach and wave around and then click back into the main unit.
posted by w0mbat at 2:43 PM on December 15, 2016 [3 favorites]


...taking a blood pressure without touching a patient using just a smart device is total bs.

That's what the Vulcan two-finger nerve pinch is for.
posted by hal9k at 3:25 PM on December 15, 2016 [1 favorite]


It's exactly the same as a tricorder, just missing the tricorderishness.
posted by parki at 3:38 PM on December 15, 2016 [2 favorites]


Ok, so we've got communicators

I always love it when people say the original communicators predicted cell phones. You remember they had to tune them like radios, right?
posted by lumpenprole at 3:45 PM on December 15, 2016 [1 favorite]


I always love it when people say the original communicators predicted cell phones. You remember they had to tune them like radios, right?

Well, the communicators on Next Gen also predated cell phones, and operated by touch and voice command. Basically, 'Hey Siri, call the Enterprise".
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 3:52 PM on December 15, 2016 [2 favorites]


Also, we literally have communicators.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 3:54 PM on December 15, 2016 [3 favorites]


Well, the communicators on Next Gen also predated cell phones

I guess you mean smartphones? There were certainly cellphones in 1987.
posted by thefoxgod at 4:48 PM on December 15, 2016 [1 favorite]


I am immensely predictable in that my favourite character in any Star Trek series is always the doctor, and I feel like one of the reasons why is that, as a person with a chronic health condition that has a cure perpetually five years away, I'm more jealous of Trek medical tech than anything else, including beaming and warp drive. Actual tricorders can't become a reality soon enough.

(Of course, you can also call me once we get the technology to fully replace someone's stolen brain, but that's another story.)
posted by ilana at 4:48 PM on December 15, 2016


a box of chocolates with maybe one or more pieces you can temporarily detach and wave around and then click back into the main unit.

So that's you, is it?
posted by quinndexter at 5:07 PM on December 15, 2016


I guess you mean smartphones? There were certainly cellphones in 1987.

That's true. What I meant was, cell phone adoption didn't really hit its stride until the late 90s. The vast majority of people watching Next Gen when it aired wouldn't have had one. My point doesn't really hold up though.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 5:14 PM on December 15, 2016


I have to admit to feeling slightly disappointed that this was talking about medical tricorders and not the scientific ones (there was an explicit distinction on the shows, as I recall). There's a free Android app (floating around as an .apk file after it was delisted from the store due to a C&D from one of the Star Trek rights-holders) that uses your smartphone sensors to mimic the functions as best it can, but it would be nice to have something more comprehensive.
posted by Wandering Idiot at 6:11 PM on December 15, 2016


Hahahaha. I take vital signs all day (EMT) and taking a blood pressure without touching a patient using just a smart device is total bs.
Going by the photos, they use a cuff device that's connected (wirelessly or physically I'm not sure) to a smart phone. Although that's nothing new. Automatic blood pressure monitors are consumer devices that you can buy in a shop so I think the big deal is supposed to be the intelligent processing of the data, not that you can measure it with a portable "smart" device.
posted by L.P. Hatecraft at 7:11 PM on December 15, 2016


Hahahaha. I take vital signs all day (EMT) and taking a blood pressure without touching a patient using just a smart device is total bs.
not_the_water,

So! There's other ways to collect blood pressure.

Take a pulse at someone's wrist. Take a pulse at the top of someone's arm. Same pulse, right?

No, because blood does not move instantaneously. It takes time for that pressure wave to migrate from shoulder to wrist. How long? In what shape does it arrive?

Function of blood pressure.

And I don't need to tell you, pulse can be detected optically. You've probably clipped LED based pulse ox onto patients more times than you can count.

There's a great Wikipedia article about Continuous Noninvasive Arterial Pressure with a fairly insane link to a dissertation here. It's worth noting this family of approach is in clinical use today.

Personally, I expect this tech path to be the first really effective, justifiable, and cheap medical sensor implant. Or, you know, if you had HD video of circulation, that might work too (this video is mindblowing). It's not at all unimaginable we'll end up with noncontact bp. Difficult, absolutely, but it *is* called the XPRIZE.
posted by effugas at 7:55 PM on December 15, 2016 [4 favorites]


effugas: "
Hahahaha. I take vital signs all day (EMT) and taking a blood pressure without touching a patient using just a smart device is total bs.
not_the_water,

So! There's other ways to collect blood pressure.

Take a pulse at someone's wrist. Take a pulse at the top of someone's arm. Same pulse, right?

No, because blood does not move instantaneously. It takes time for that pressure wave to migrate from shoulder to wrist. How long? In what shape does it arrive?

Function of blood pressure.

And I don't need to tell you, pulse can be detected optically. You've probably clipped LED based pulse ox onto patients more times than you can count.

There's a great Wikipedia article about Continuous Noninvasive Arterial Pressure with a fairly insane link to a dissertation here. It's worth noting this family of approach is in clinical use today.

Personally, I expect this tech path to be the first really effective, justifiable, and cheap medical sensor implant. Or, you know, if you had HD video of circulation, that might work too (this video is mindblowing). It's not at all unimaginable we'll end up with noncontact bp. Difficult, absolutely, but it *is* called the XPRIZE.
"

I used to use the hell out of pulse oximetry when I worked in polysom. And, according to my GP, I will very well be able to avoid a lab visit when she decides I need to retitrate (due to recent, reasonably substantial, sustainable weight loss).
posted by Samizdata at 8:42 PM on December 15, 2016


OK, The Remote Sensingof Mental Stress From
the Electromagnetic Reflection Coefficient of
Human Skininthe Sub-THz Range
surprised the hell even out of me.
Recent advances in the imaging of living skin
[Huang et al., 1991] have revealed that the human
perspiration system contains elements such as a
coiled sweat duct in the epidermis [Knuttel and
Boehlau-Godau, 2000; Knuttel et al., 2004]. Their
morphology (Fig. 1), coupled with the dielectric
properties of the skin, led to the concept that these
coiled sections could behave like a classical helical
antenna and have an EM response in the extremely
high-frequency range (70–600 GHz) [Feldman et al.,
2009; Shafirstein and Moros, 2011].
They claim results in 110-170Ghz. Heartrate at a distance is pretty well established over microwave doppler, but stress?
posted by effugas at 12:57 AM on December 16, 2016 [1 favorite]


When my kid was born last June, the nurses all had actual Star Trek (Next Gen)-style communicators clipped to their scrubs where you push a button, say a name and are connected to the other party.

It blew my mind.
posted by ArgentCorvid at 5:15 AM on December 16, 2016


Computer?

Working.
posted by oheso at 7:17 AM on December 16, 2016


wrong thread. nvm
posted by xcasex at 9:16 AM on December 16, 2016


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