You know in Star Trek when Bones runs a mobile scanning device over some poor red-shirted schlub and comes back seconds later with a diagnosis? Well, that futuristic Star Trek tricorder is a step closer to reality today thanks to the Scanadu Scout, a handheld medical scanning device that works in conjunction with a smartphone to take all five vital signs in just 10 seconds. It will cost $150 and you can get it by the end of 2013.
Wired had the opportunity to play with a working prototype this week and it was, frankly, amazing. Hold the Scout to your temple and it registers pulse transit time (for blood pressure monitoring), heart rate, electrical heart activity, temperature, heart rate variability and blood oxygenation. The tracker then transmits that data to a smartphone app that clocks how those variables change over time. It’s meant to give people greater control over their own health data and insights on how it might be changing.
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The device, designed by Yves Behar, fits nicely in the palm of your hand, and is approximately the size of a makeup compact. But while the hardware is nice, what’s truly exciting is the software back end.
The extensible software platform is meant to be opened up to input from other tracking and monitoring devices. Two immediate examples, both of which will be available in 2013, are the ScanaFlo and ScanaFlu. ScanaFlo is a small plastic wand with a row of urine test strips that can check for pregnancy complications, pre-eclampsia, gestational diabetes, kidney failure, and urinary tract infections. ScanaFlu has a small tray that you spit into and it checks for one of five respiratory diseases: Strep A, Influenza A, Influenza B, Adenovirus or RSV. While pricing hasn’t been set for either, both are planned to cost less than a trip to the clinic.
"The person who is in love with their vision of community will destroy community. But the person who loves the people around them will create community everywhere they go." ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"Doubt is not a pleasant condition but certainty is absurd" ~ Voltaire
"The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion." ~ Thomas Paine
"The person who is in love with their vision of community will destroy community. But the person who loves the people around them will create community everywhere they go." ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"Doubt is not a pleasant condition but certainty is absurd" ~ Voltaire
"The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion." ~ Thomas Paine
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