Mike Lazaridis (pictured) and Doug Fregin, two founders of RIM (now BlackBerry), have set up a CAD100 million ($97 million) fund to back start-ups, with a likely impact on the mobile health market.

Speaking with Bloomberg, Lazaridis referenced the medical device Tricorder (famous from Star Trek) as the kind of product he wanted to turn into reality with the backing of his Quantum Valley Investments.

“The medical tricorder would be astounding, the whole idea of blood tests, MRIs — imagine if you could do that with a single device. That may be possible and possible only because of the sensitivity, selectivity and resolution we can get from quantum sensors made with these quantum breakthroughs,” said Lazaridis about the fund which he hopes will leverage advances made in quantum computing.

Lazaridis stepped down as RIM’s co-CEO 14 months ago.

He is not the only one in the mobile industry transfixed by the Tricorder from Star Trek. Last year saw the launch of the Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize, which is co-sponsored by the chipset vendor.

The aim of the contest is to build a portable device that can diagnose accurately 15 diseases across 30 patients in the space of three days.