XPRIZE, in partnership with CBS, has launched Tricorder Federation, a new promotional website for the Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE competition, which will award $10M to the team that successfully creates a real life Tricorder that can make reliable health diagnoses anywhere, anytime. The new site’s app invites fans to upload a picture of themselves decked out in Trek uniform and will then create a poster comparing real life ailments to fictional Trek universe ones. The platform seeks not only to raise awareness for the XPRIZE competition itself but also for illnesses around the world that could one day be conquered by improvements in medical technology, like those advances envisioned in Star Trek.
The World’s First User Friendly Medical Tricorder
The new Tricorder Federation website is a community of Star Trek fans who wish to support the $10M Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE to bring Star Trek’s medical Tricorder to life. The XPRIZE competition already has 30 teams from 9 different countries competing to be the first to develop a truly accessible medical Tricorder that can provide medical diagnoses anytime, anywhere. As the Tricorder Federation website puts it:
Just think what the world will look like when healthcare is no longer stuck in, as Dr. McCoy would put it, “the Dark Ages.” When noninvasive diagnostic tools and treatments are as common as communicators…er, mobile phones.
The competition is incentivizing teams with an impressive $10 Million prize to create a medical scanner capable of monitoring and diagnosing conditions from anemia, diabetes (type 2) and pneumonia to tuberculosis and stroke. The winning team’s device will be the technology most accurately able to diagnose a set of diseases without help from a doctor or medical facility. Moreover, the winning Tricorder should be user friendly and able to target the consumer market, so the teams will also be judged on consumer experience with their device.
Join the Tricorder Federation
Interested in being a part of the XPRIZE contest but don’t have a team of super genius scientists and engineers willing to work round the clock to snag the $10M? Just like to dress in Star Trek uniforms and/or take selfies? Why not satisfy both of these cravings. Go suit up, take your Trek selfie, and enlist in the Tricorder Federation.
First comment the worst, second the best – the thirds the one with the tribble hair chest.
A real life Tricorder that can make reliable health diagnoses anywhere, anytime?
A medical Tricorder device is not going to ever be perfected. The Tricorder’s evolution will be continuing over time.
Unless your talking about my Droid Ally!
There are software programs now that use data input that produce pretty accurate diagnoses. All a Tri-corder is going to do is speed data entry. What’s needed is a means to power such a device. It doesn’t do you any good to have this wonderful do-hicky if the battery is dead….
My wife is an RN (soon to be NP) and has one of these databases on her smartphone. She can make a reliable diagnoses anywhere, anytime now….
TRICORDER FEDERATION = EXCELLENT! =D
the website and concept are the coolest! I love it! =D
KUDOS!!!
…glad they didn’t use any nu-trek uniforms, or weak-a$$ fake nu-tricorder =P
Four posts in, and the haters can resist taking their shots.
Yep. If it doesn’t look like a salt shaker, it just isn’t Trek. Bastards!
…sorry Phil, obviously these people know a good tricorder when they see one ;-)
keep on spinnin’! =P
#5 That’s because this is in part sponsored by CBS.
Last I checked Paramount and CBS’ haven’t started cooperating together. Shame too, because it would be nice to have some TV specials with the new cast.
TNG ruined the Tricorder.
Seems to me like it would cost well over 10 million dollars to design this thing, but if we get a tricorder out of it, it’s a great cause!
10 – The patent would be worth billions. So, that’s not the issue.
There is one thing to remember: learning you have a disease and having a trained medical person to deal with your reaction are two different situations. The tricorder still requires a DOCTOR’s skills.
Star Trek into Darkness is now on Netflix live streaming in the US of A!
This is quite a feather in Trek’s cap, to inspire such a large prize. Let’s keep in mind that McCoy’s tricorder had a function that allowed active manipulation of patient physiology via a device placed on the patient itself. Recall that this was done to save Chekov in STIV. We may be significantly far away from this capability in the 21st Century.
I kind of messed mine up. Have the rank listed twice and don’t have “USS” at the start of my starship. Oh well, picture looks nice.
I couldn’t help but think, while reading the headline of this article —
But there are HEAPS of captains in the Trek! I want a tricorder that has Kelsey Grammar, George Takei, Leonard Nimoy, and, you know,
Styles
Terrell
Decker
Garth of Izar
Harrison
Garrett
Pike
Riker
etc etc
Give me them ALL as opposed to them ‘all’ :)
^ I know how silly that is…. it’s just a funny idea is all
Hahha! Or say…
A Phaser with every red-shirt’s signature.
So, anyone make a real life tricorder yet?
Nope, but fortunately Gene stipulated in his will that anyone who makes something that does basically what a tricorder does can call it a “Tricorder.”
I remember someone made one in the 90s that had a few basic functions, called the TR-107 Tricorder.
As a scientist, it’s going to take more than $10-million to make a tricorder. You’re kinda looking at $billions.