Tricorder X Prize

By  Heather Mack 01:24 pm April 14, 2017
Compared to the time between now and Star Trek's 23rd Century, 2012 isn't too long ago. But it’s been long road for the teams of engineers who participated in the Qualcomm-backed Tricorder X Prize competition. There was immediate interest when the challenge to build a real-life Tricorder – a handheld medical scanner as depicted in Star Trek – was first announced at CES at 2012, with 255 teams...
By  Jonah Comstock 12:00 am April 13, 2017
After more than five years of designing, building, and testing versatile, portable consumer medical devices, the $10 million Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize has announced a winner. Final Frontier Medical Devices, a small team led by engineer-turned ER doctor Basil Harris and his brother George (also an engineer) won the top prize of $2.6 million. Runner-up Dynamical Biomarkers Group will walk away...
By  Jonah Comstock 03:53 pm December 13, 2016
The Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize has narrowed its finalists down to two: Taiwan-based Dynamical Biomarkers and Paoli, Pennsylvania-based Final Frontier Medical Devices. The final phase of the contest will involve user testing at the Altman Clinical Translational Research Institute at the University of California San Diego.  "It is an impressive achievement for these two teams to advance to the...
By  Jonah Comstock 11:17 am January 4, 2016
The Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize has extended its deadline and tweaked the requirements for its seven remaining finalists, the group announced last month. Launched in 2013, the Tricorder X Prize is a $10 million competition to build a self-contained, handheld device for consumers that can diagnose a number of diseases and check several vital signs. “The accomplishments the teams have made so far in...
By  Jonah Comstock 08:13 am April 15, 2015
Intelesens's Zensor device. Scanadu and Intelesens (makers of the Zensor device), two of the ten finalists for the Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize, have merged their teams into one as the competition enters the home stretch. It wraps up in 2016. "Intelesens and Scanadu have been working together informally for a while," Shannon Wolf Montague, Commercial Manager at Intelesense, told MobiHealthNews...
By  Jonah Comstock 05:30 am August 27, 2014
The finalists have been announced for the Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize, lowering the field from 22 companies that had not yet dropped out to just 10 that will compete for the $10 million prize in a series of hands-on trials of their handheld, smartphone-connected diagnostic devices designed for consumer use. “This is an extremely hard competition,” Dr. Erik Viirre, technical and medical director...
By  Jonah Comstock 11:40 am May 7, 2014
Nanobiosym's GENE-Radar device It's been six months since the final 34 teams for the $10 million Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize were announced. The prize is being offered to the team that can create a handheld medical sensor with a user-friendly interface that can diagnose a list of common diseases and read a list of common vital signs. That list of 34 last year was for teams that had not only...
By  Jonah Comstock 12:04 pm February 4, 2014
Since the 34 teams competing for the Qualcomm Tricorder were announced in November, a few, like Scanadu, have caught the public eye while the vast majority remained in stealth mode. Now at least one team, Johns Hopkins University's Aezon, is poking its head out to crowdfund its entry on Indiegogo. The team is attempting to raise $10,000 to support its shot at $10 million. "So far we haven't had a...
By  Jonah Comstock 03:06 am December 11, 2013
Jack Andraka, the now 16-year-old who, at 15, developed a test that could revolutionize how we test for pancreatic, ovarian, and lung cancer, is surprisingly humble. Speaking at the mHealth Summit in National Harbor, Maryland, Andraka attributed his findings not to any inherent brilliance, but to a combination of hard work and an outsider perspective. "I don't think there's such a thing as an old...
By  Aditi Pai 05:00 am November 10, 2013
This week in digital health, 34 teams were announced for the Tricorder X Prize, the Center for Connected Health was awarded a grant from McKesson to develop a chemotherapy self management app, and Farzard Mostashari gave his perspective on a number of issues in healthcare and healthcare technology. A lot of stories hit the web this week, but there are still more stories. Here are some other...