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...
Nanobiosym, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based digital health company whose Gene-RADAR scanner won the Nokia Sensing X Prize a few years ago, has been granted Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) from the FDA for its Zika Virus Test.
EUA is a special clearance pathway the FDA uses for devices that address an immediate public health crisis like Zika. Devices authorized under EUA aren’t cleared or...
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...
Updated with comments from Scanadu
Scanadu, a personal health scanner company that shattered records on Indiegogo a few years ago, has raised $6.5 million according to an SEC filing. The new funding, a significant drop from the company's $35 million series B last year, comes at a time when the company is under fire for what many customers see as an unsatisfactory end to its FDA usability trial,...
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...
Sunnyvale, California-based DynoSense, which has developed a mobile-enabled sensor that tracks a number of vital signs and other health biometrics, raised $9.4 million from WI Harper Group, JKOM Cloud Health Technology, Plug and Play Tech Center, Jinmao Capital, and Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich and Rosati.
DynoSense's device, called DynoSensor, measures ECG, EKG, pulmonary plethysmography (PPM),...
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...
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...
Teams have been preregistered for the Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize -- a handheld medical scanner competition backed by the Qualcomm Foundation -- for nearly a year. In fact, 255 teams were reported as preregistered last year. But representatives of the $10 million prize have now announced the 34 teams that have completed the full registration and paid $5,000 to $10,000 entry fees (depending on the...
Scanadu CEO Walter De Brouwer (right) and Star Trek's Leonard Nimoy (center)
Scanadu, the startup building a suite of smartphone-connected medical diagnostic tools for home use, is extending the Indiegogo campaign for its premier SCOUT device an additional month after hitting the $1 million mark. The extension, coupled with the fact that the company is only $300,000 away from the top funded...
