I am not a Star Trek fan nor that keen on science fiction but when I first read the competition guidelines for the Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize I immediately became hooked. Here was a competition to challenge convention, to promote disruption in the medical profession and to incentivize technology breakthroughs that facilitate individual analysis while also drawing on one of the great theories of computer history

The winning device should be able to diagnose a set of 15 distinct conditions in a pool of people within three days while providing a strong consumer experience. In addition, the winner must meet a minimum criteria for both diagnosis and consumer experience, while being able to continuously monitor five vital signs over the trial period and logging this data to the cloud. Finally it must have a mass of no more than 5 pounds, and most importantly to me, perform in the hands of a consumer, independently of a healthcare worker or facility. This last point intrigued me, as instantly I found myself thinking towards the medical equivalent of the Turing Test.

Alan Turing is regarded as the father of modern day computing and devised the Turing Test which says if the human judge cannot tell whether they are talking with a computer or another human then the computer is considered to have passed the Turing Test. The test is a measure of how closely computers can exhibit intelligent behaviour. In a similar manner, if the patient cannot tell the difference between the Tricorder’s results, and a clinician’s, then the device can be considered to have passed a modern day medical equivalent of the Turing Test. It should also tell us something about the winner's potential for take-up among mhealth users.

In terms of the prize criteria, measuring five vital signs should not prove too problematic since technologies from independent organisations exist that allow single parameter approaches to be harnessed together to provide such continuous quantification. Given enough time, and access to the right equipment, I feel confident that a system could be assembled relatively quickly out of what is already in the marketplace. And then coupled to a hub or aggregating device, the data could be fired to the cloud in a timely manner. But that is hardly the type of ground breaking thinking that the organizers are after from this contest.

The system will have to be broken down into effectively four elements: Sensors, data upload, packaging and user interface. Some clever utilization of the status quo regarding sensors and data upload might be required, perhaps exploiting recent advances in laser diode technologies coming onto the market, coupled with the latest smartphone technologies to handle the data transfer.

However the real groundbreakers will be the packaging and user interface. Will people try and utilize what has gone before? Will they adopt the readily available interfaces? Or develop something unique and bespoke?  The mobile health market has developed  interoperability standards, such as Continua or IEEE11073,  that allow for these Body and Personal Area Networks of sensors to be established. Will the winning Tricorder entry utilise these or move to something even more avant garde or bespoke?

I know from personal experience running clinical trials on medical devices that asking people to interact with devices is much harder than is often anticipated. The trials for the Tricorder X Prize are planned for the US, which some might argue potentially limits the efficacy of the systems demonstrations as the US is not an accurate representation of the rest of the world’s health demographics. Also leaving any medical device unattended with patients requires an interface that is very simple and effective at relaying instructions. This may very well be the area that needs the most focus of attention given the diversity of languages spoken in the States.

One thing that doesn’t make the headlines for the Tricorder X Prize is the entry fee. Dependent upon the month and year of entry, each team must pay between US$5,000 and US$25,000 just to compete for the prize which may dissuade individual leftfield thinkers. One other area of interest is how the organizers will obtain the necessary regulatory clearances and ethics approvals from the FDA to conduct the tests in the US. Will the FDA be more or less generous to this prize than the regulatory authorities that granted flight clearances for the Ansari X Prize spacecraft to leave the earth’s atmosphere?

Ending on the subject of space, it should be noted that entries to the Tricorder X Prize  must have a “mass” rather than a “weight” of less than 5 pounds, which suggests the winning device must be able to work in zero gravity environments as well as on the surface of the earth. Which of course is very Star Trek indeed. 

For more details about the Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize, see here.

The editorial views expressed in this article are solely those of the author(s) and will not necessarily reflect the views of the GSMA, its Members or Associate Members.