Wednesday 19 April 2017

WINNER OF A GLOBAL COMPETITION: MEET DXTER, THE REAL-LIFE STAR TREK TRICORDERScience

WINNER OF A GLOBAL COMPETITION: MEET DXTER, THE REAL-LIFE STAR TREK TRICORDERScience



 fiction has given inventors a lot of inspiration, for instance, who wouldn’t like to have the sonic screwdriver of Dr. Who or the Tricorder from Star Trek? Well, while there hasn’t been any news on the sonic screwdriver, there is news about the all-purpose medical device known as the Tricorder.

The medical world would be changed forever with the Tricorder as it would be able to diagnose a patient instantly. The X-Price Foundation wanted the Tricorder so badly that they started a worldwide competition to find out if anyone out there could invent one. DXTER IS THE REAL-LIFE TRICORDER One team has come out victorious; a family team with the name of Final Frontier Medical Devices from Pennsylvania in the USA. The non-profit foundation managed to get hold of the $2.5 million prize fund, while the Dynamical Biomarkers Group from Taiwan came in second place and took home $1million.

The whole objective of the Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE competition was to come up with a handheld device that was non-invasive and which was lightweight, which was able to identify 13 different health conditions, 12 of which were diseases and the absence of disease, within 90 minutes to 24 hours and without additional help from any medical professionals. Vital health metrics that were required to be constantly monitored included heartbeat and respiratory functions. It was said that the winning device from the team was, in fact, more advanced that the fictional version from Star Trek. The competition started in 2012 and out of the 312 teams that started out, it was cut down to just ten teams. The two finalists had been revealed in December last year, and six were honored at the Los Angeles prizegiving ceremony. Dr. Basil Harris, an emergency physician, and brother George Harris, a network engineer headed the winning team. They designed DxtER, a device that had artificial intelligence, which they funded along with two other members of the family. They decided that one device wasn’t sufficient to be able to diagnose, accurately and quickly, various conditions in the patient and found they needed to link the device to a wealth of medical data. winner of a global competition meet dxter the reallife star trek tricorder

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