Digital transformation of Health Screening

The Scanadu Scout starts to solve this problem and is the ideal product for trekkies  replicatinf the Star Trek TRICORDER and and techies allowing medical data to be stored on a smartphone app that patients can use to monitor their health, The Scout measures heart rate, breathing and temperature. It contains a variety of different sensors alongside a microphone on the top of the gadget that together, can read vital signs, including body temperature, heart rate, blood oxygen level, heart rate variability and pulse wave transit time (PWTT). PWTT is the time it takes for a heartbeat to reach somewhere else in a person’s body and is related to blood pressure.

Walter De Brouwer, a Belgian entrepreneur based at Nasa’s Ames Research Centre in California, who is behind the device, was inspired by Dr Spock’s Tricorder.  ‘Star Trek was more than just a movie, it was a business plan,’.  The Tricorder was used by the doctor 'Bones' McCoy in Star Trek to wirelessly scan a patient, either in a ‘sick bay’ on a star ship or during an away mission, to assess an individual’s medical status, and allow him to quickly and easily diagnose their condition without an intensive or invasive examination. The Scout was one of the 10 finalists for the 2014 Qualcomm Tricorder Xprize, but already the technology has moved on from the 23rd century of Star Trek to the 27th century century of Larry Niven's classic "Tales of Known Space" and Healmet of San Diego are launching a table-top auto-doc that eliminates the need for the doctor or for a health nerd to look at graphs and charts, simply focusing on the top preventable issues in the developed world and informing the user or texting their carer or physician if there is need for a further check up.

Finalists for the the 2014 Qualcomm Tricorder Xprize

1. Scandu (Moffett Field, California), a team from Silicon Valley-based start-up Scandu led by technology entrepreneur and company co-founder and CEO, Walter De Brouwer.
2. Aezon (Rockville, Maryland), led by Tatiana Rypinski, a team of student engineers from Johns Hopkins University partnering with the Center for Bioengineering Innovation and Design.
3. CloudDX (Mississauga, Canada), a team from medical devices manufacturer Biosign and led by company chief medical officer, Dr. Sonny Kohli.
4. Danvantri (Chennai, India), a team from technology manufacturer American Megatrends India and led by company Director and CEO, Sridharan Mani.
5. DMI (Cambridge, Massachusetts), a team led by Dr. Eugene Y. Chan of the DNA Medicine Institute partnering with Nasa, the National Institutes of Health and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
6. Dynamical Biomarkers Group (Zhongli City, Taiwan), a team of physicians, scientists and engineers led by Harvard Medical School professor Chung-Kang Peng.
7. Final Frontier Medical Devices (Paoli, Pennsylvania), a team led by the founders of Basil Leaf Technologies - brothers Dr. Basil Harris, an emergency room physician, and George Harris, a network engineer.
8. Mesi Simplifying diagnostics (Ljubljana, Slovenia), a team from diagnostic medical device manufacturer Mesi and led by company CEO, Jakob Susteric.
9. ScanNurse (London, England), a team from diagnostic medical manufacturer ScanNurse and led by biomedical engineer and company founder, Anil Vaidya.
10. Zensor (Belfast, Ireland), a team from clinical sensor and electrode company Intelesens and led by chief technology officer, Professor Jim McLaughlin.