star trek medical tools

June 16, 2017

How Close Are We to a Real Star Trek –Style Medical Tricorder?

Vital signs information and images aren’t enough for a fully automated device that can tell you what’s actually wrong with a patient

By Despina Moschou & The Conversation US

The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation , an online publication covering the latest research.

Does science inspire fiction or does it work the other way around? In the case of medical technology, the long-running TV and film series Star Trek has increasingly been inspiring researchers worldwide. Two teams were recently awarded the Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize for developing handheld devices that can diagnose a range of diseases and check a patient’s vital signs without invasive tests – inspired by Star Trek’s medical “tricorder” device.

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In the show, a doctor would use the tricorder and its detachable scanner to quickly gather data on a patient and instantly work out what was wrong with them. It could check organ functions and detect diseases and their causes, and also contained data on a range of alien lifeforms. But how close are we really to using such devices (assuming we don’t need them to diagnose aliens)?

The main aim of the two prizewinners is to integrate several technologies in one device. They haven’t created an all-in-one handheld machine but they do both represent significant steps forward.

The main winner, known as DxtER and created by US firm Basil Leaf Technologies, is actually an iPad app with artificial intelligence. It uses a number of non-invasive sensors that can be attached to the body to collect data about vital signs, body chemistry and biological functions. The runner-up technology from Taiwan’s Dynamical Biomarkers Group similarly connects a smartphone to several wireless handheld test modules that can analyse vital signs, blood and urine, and skin appearance.

The judges said both devices nearly met the benchmarks for accurately diagnosing 13 diseases including anaemia, lung disease, diabetes, pneumonia and urinary tract infection. These are the most successful efforts we’ve seen to bring so many functionalities into a single, user-friendly, portable diagnostic system.

Part of the success is due to the development of a variety of technologies that make up such all-in-one systems, although they still have some way to go. Probably the most advanced are mobile vital signs monitoring devices. For example, the ViSi Mobile System can remotely monitor all core vital signs including blood pressure, blood oxygen, heart rate and electrical activity, and skin temperature. It uses electrocardiogram (ECG) sensors attached to the chest and a pressure sensor in cuffs on the thumb and arm, both attached to a wearable wrist unit that feeds all the signals wirelessly to desktop or mobile device, with the same accuracy as conventional intensive care equipment .

All the various sensor data from a system such as this then needs to be turned into meaningful readings – and that requires specialist software. For example, the Airstrip Technologies software can pull in information from hundreds of different types and brands of patient monitors and other equipment, as well as medical records, scan results and even messaging apps, to display a full picture of patient’s changing condition in real time.

Portable imaging technologies are another element needed to assess a patient and present the relevant information. For example, there are already miniaturized USB-based ultrasound probes that can connect directly to a smartphone to provide instant ultrasound images. With the quality of mobile cameras and image processing capabilities continually improving, this technology is likely to get even better in the near future. This could mean instant X-ray scans or skin abnormality diagnosis using pattern recognition software.

Data and diagnosis

But vital signs information and images aren’t enough for a fully automated device that can tell you what’s actually wrong with a patient. The most mature technology we have in this area is for diabetes monitoring. Portable home blood glucose meters that can test a drop of blood on a paper can already be connected to mobile apps to allow diabetes sufferers to assess the severity of their condition.

Meanwhile, completely non-invasive methods for measuring glucose that don’t involve finger pricking to get a drop of blood are under development. These include analysing sweat or the interstitial fluid located a few micrometres below the skin’s surface (above the pain-causing nerves).

A number of innovative companies around the world are focusing on using similar handheld systems to diagnose other diseases, including HIV, tuberculosis, bacterial infections and cardiovascular disease. These rely on the key enabling technology of microfluidics, which uses specially designed microchips to manipulate tiny amounts of liquid.

Commonly known as lab-on-a-chip technology , this allows you to reduce a complete clinical laboratory testing system to a device a few centimetres across. You can take a sample, prepare it for testing (for example by isolating bacteria in the blood) and identify and measure the microbe present.

But while there has been significant progress in the developing bits and pieces of a tricorder, there is still work to do putting them altogether in a genuinely handheld package. Various equipment needs to be miniaturised and we need more progress in portable computers so they can handle all the information and data required for a complete picture of a patient’s health condition. We also need more development of the more thorough diagnostic features, such as the lab-on-chip and portable imaging systems, and less invasive testing methods. We may not have a tricorder in our hands yet, but we are definitely getting closer.

This article was originally published on The Conversation . Read the original article .

Building the Tricorder: The race to create a real-life Star Trek medical scanner

Its vision of romantic encounters with aliens and plagues of tribbles may not have come to pass just yet, but Star Trek has proved surprisingly accurate in predicting the future in other ways.

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When it comes to technology, the show's gadgets have already become reality in several cases: its communicator predicted the clamshell mobile phone, the food replicator was made real with 3D food printing , and Captain Kirk was using voice input long before Alexa became a household name.

But of all Star Trek's technological imaginings, it's the Tricorder that continues to capture the popular and scientfic imagination: a handheld medical device that could be used to analyse a patient, helping doctors diagnose and treat the crew on the bridge and beyond.

No blood tests, no X-rays, no genetic sequencing: Star Trek's doctors could just point their tricorders at the patient and seconds later work out if they'd succumbed to a cold or the Quazulu VIII virus.

The Tricorder continues to fascinate because it magically solves some of the problems about medicine we still have today: it takes too long, it's expensive, it's uncertain, and the times you need it most -- when you're far from home -- is often when it's unavailable.

People have been trying to make replicate elements of the Tricorder since the 1990s. But it's only in the last few years that the dream of creating a genuine Tricorder-type device has seemed within reach.

The first signs that a medical Tricorder could be more than a sci-fi fantasy coincided with the emergence of the first serious smartphones and tablets. Back in 2007, MIT researchers used a Nokia 770 as the basis for a Tricorder , displaying information from sensor networks, while a few years later, a rash of medical peripherals released for the iPhone offered the hope that Apple's mobile could be turned into a real-life Tricorder .

Such early discussions focused on customising existing mobile hardware to a medical diagnostic device; the first standalone device would be a few years further on.

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One of the first companies to make a serious attempt at creating a Tricorder was Scanadu, which released a device called the Scout in 2015 .The Scout could measure a handful of vital signs -- blood pressure, heart rate, blood oxygen saturation, and temperature -- by being held up to a patient's forehead. It's not quite the Tricorder's no-touch technique, and had no diagnostic capabilities, but it was arguably further towards such a device than any hardware before it. After raising $1.7m on Indiegogo, and several million dollars more from investors , the Scout eventually went on sale. However, the company had released it under the banner of a " research device for investigational use ". When it subsequently failed to win FDA approval -- for unspecified reasons -- the research effectively came to an end, and devices were bricked, leaving buyers furious .

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Despite the Scout's difficulties, there was no shortage of companies that were looking to succeed were Scanadu had failed.

As befits a potentially game-changing and technologically-complex device, the Tricorder concept had caught Google's eye. Back in 2014, the head of life sciences at what was then Google X, the company's moonshot division, announced a cancer-detection system that would lay the foundations for the creation of a Tricorder. The system that Dr Andrew Conrad announced aimed to use magnetic nanoparticles that would attach themselves to cancer particles; a separate wrist-worn device would measure the particles to detect cancer. The system would over time form part of a real-life Tricorder, Conrad said.

"Instead [of] going to the doctor who says, 'Let me draw blood and in three days I'll call you if there's anything wrong,' the doctor can look and say, 'Oh, I just checked all your blood over this last year, and it looks like your kidneys are good, your liver is good, I don't see any indication of oncologic cells, pretty good, thanks.' ... We want to have a Tricorder where Dr. McCoy will wave this thing and say, 'Oh, you're suffering from Valerian death fever.' And he'd then give some shot in a person's neck and they'd immediately get better. We won't do the shots -- our partners will do the shots. But we're hoping to build the Tricorder," he told Medium at the time.

Since then, Google and its X division have been reorganised: Google's life sciences arm has become Verily, now overseen -- along with Google and other Google spinouts, including Calico -- by a new parent company Alphabet . Conrad remains head of Verily, but his dream of a Star Trek-grade medical device has not come to pass: Verily has yet to showcase any progress on building either the cancer-detection system or the Tricorder itself.

A spokesperson for Verily says its nanoparticles research is still active, but added it had experienced difficulties in the past: "Our nanoparticle research is focused on developing nanoparticles that demonstrate consistent properties. We found that nanoparticles we purchased from third-party manufacturers have been unreliable in research due to inconsistencies."

The $10m prize

Arguably one of the biggest stimulants for building a Tricorder came when chipmaker Qualcomm sponsored the Tricorder XPRIZE , a competition intended to help foster the creation of innovative medical hardware.

Rather than asking for a machine that can read vitals to help diagnose any number of illnesses, the XPRIZE asked for hardware that could diagnose a set list of 13 medical condition, including anaemia and diabetes, as well as monitor a handful of vital signs.

The prize, launched in 2011, was won last year by Basil Leaf Technologies with a device called DxtER , a small unit with a range of specific medical peripherals, including a sensor for heart and lung sounds, an ECG monitor for measuring heart rate and rhythm, and a device for analysing blood glucose and white cell count, a sign of infection and inflammation when raised.

By winning the prize, the inventors -- a group of siblings and others led by Philadelphia-based emergency room physician Basil Harris -- received a $2.6m grant to help take the DxtER from concept to commercialisation.

However, the first publicly available device based on this technology is likely to have a far smaller scope than Bones' Tricorder. Basil Leaf Technologies is working on creating a monitoring device for a single disease state, congestive cardiac failure (CCF), that a patient could keep with them at home to help monitor the progress of their condition. The aim is for a person with CCF, a chronic condition, to interact with the device a couple of times a day, and that information to be sent back to a medical professional to review. With such longitudinal monitoring, a doctor can monitor the patient's progress regularly without having to ask them to take time out of their days to come in for regular check-ups.

"A diagnostic device that can diagnose one of 13 medical conditions is not really that viable -- a first year medical resident can diagnose 75 to 100 medical conditions. We just designed something to win a prize, but it's not something that's useful out in the marketplace yet. And if you think about how the FDA in the United States approves medical devices, if we sought an approval for a medical device that did a large collection of medical conditions, it would take aeons to be approved. From a strategic point of view, we changed our strategy and said let's focus on one disease state," Phil Charron, head of user experience at Basil Leaf Technologies, tells ZDNet.

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Nonetheless, Basil Leaf Technologies is still working towards creating a Tricorder in the way that most people think of it: a single device that can diagnose a range of conditions. For a real-life Tricorder to serve as a universal diagnostic tool in the way that Star Trek envisioned, it would need to be able to analyse far more biomarkers than the DxtER currently does.

Handily, scientists are also working on expanding the capabilities of Tricorder-like devices. Earlier this year, researchers from the University of Glasgow created a handheld sensor device based on a CMOS chip that can analyse a number of metabolites in blood or urine, analysing them to diagnose conditions including heart attacks.

Elsewhere, companies are working on creating Tricorder type hardware with a focus on infectious disease: the Q-POC, made by QuantumDx, is expected to launch next year, and brings handheld diagnostics for bacterial and viral infections. The idea of the Q-POC is putting short-read genetic sequencing into a device the size of a smartphone: with a sample of bodily fluid, the reader could pick up not only the nature of an infection, like TB, but also its resistance to particular drugs. The technology already exists and is in common use, but shrinking it down to a device that can fit in a pocket is QuantumDx's real challenge.

The fact that the company has had to put back the Q-POC's launch date from 2016 to 2019 shows that miniaturisation is no small task. In fact, it's one of the key challenges that exists for building a Tricorder: the technology that doctors use to diagnose illnesses already exists, but it often exists in large, discrete machines, often spread around different parts of a hospital. Tricorders have to bring all of those capabilities into a single device that can be carried by one person.

"Most of the technologies that exist out there we can turn into something we can put into the patient's hands, I think that [the challenge] is more about shrinking the technologies that exist. A lot of the things that a physician can do in a regular exam room we put in a Tricorder. Labs and radiology -- that's the difficult thing to shrink down into a Tricorder," Basil Leaf Technologies' Charron says.

As well as difficulties with hardware, creating the right software for Tricorders is likely a number of years away. Creating algorithms that can diagnose certain conditions from a tight set of physical biomarkers is one thing, but there's an old adage in medicine that 'if you listen hard enough, the patient will tell you the diagnosis'. To be a universal diagnostic device, Tricorders will not only have to interpret test results, they'll also need software that knows the right questions to ask and unpick the answers they get back: a patient saying they have a tight chest pain and a sharp chest pain might sound similar, but could be the difference between a full blown heart attack or pericarditis -- a painful, but relatively benign, infection of the heart's covering.

"Our expectations about the medical tricorder stem from Star Trek and it's never a good decision to base expectations on science fiction, even though many technologies have become real from science fiction in the 21st century," says Dr Bertalan Meskó, director of The Medical Futurist Institute . And it doesn't mean we won't need doctors, Meskó says.

"There is a reason why we train medical professionals for decades and artificial intelligence-based algorithms, tricorders and many other advanced technologies are designed to upgrade their capabilities so they can use their unique vision, expertise and experience while focusing on the patients. The tricorder should make this possible instead of replacing what physicians do today."

Though the challenges to a medical Tricorder remain substantial, technology companies show no signs of waning enthusiasm for the device. That's because the potential applications for such hardware are huge. Many of the companies working on the tech today envision their machines being used by healthcare staff that aren't doctors to go do some of the run-of-the-mill diagnostic legwork, calling in doctors only for the trickiest of cases.

And, aside from managing consultants' workloads better, Tricorders could potentially make a much more significant contribution to medicine. Imagine an area -- be it in rural Europe or rural Africa -- where population density is lower, and the provision of medical care is even more sparse. Instead of having to drive for hours or even days to find a doctor the next time you take sick, a Tricorder in the home or local clinic could help you to decide whether you need to get to the nearest A&E or take a couple of aspirin and sleep off the fever.

"A working tricorder could bring about a new era in medicine," says Meskó.

Instead of expensive machines and long waiting times, information would be available immediately. Physicians could scan a patient, or patients could scan themselves and receive a list of diagnostic options and suggestions. "Imagine the influence it could have on underdeveloped regions. It should not substitute for medical supervision, but when there is none it comes in handy. Also, it would make the biggest promise of digital health real: making patients the point-of-care. Technologically, it's absolutely viable," says Meskó.

Perhaps the most interesting use of the Tricorder takes us right back to the device's sci-fi conception. Should humans ever attempt more long-distance space travel, a Tricorder would be a must: a manned mission to Mars could see astronauts travel for weeks or months without access to the full repertoire of medical support.

A sufficiently advanced Tricorder could help astronauts keep in good health during the journey. Without it, it's hard to imagine how the next generation of astronauts will be able to boldly go where no one has gone before.

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Four Star Trek Medical Technologies We Actually Use Today

Obviously reaching space, the final frontier as it’s been said, isn’t too much of a hardship in Star Trek, but as of now, it’s still something that human beings have yet to see as a walk in the park. When it comes to the medical technology that Star Trek is also well-known for there are a few devices that would appear to be quite close to what’s been seen on TV that are in use today. Whether they were inspired by Star Trek or are simply the next step on the path towards being able to diagnose and possibly cure many ailments is hard to say, but there are medical tools and procedures that are quite similar to and can be compared to those that are seen on the show. Obviously, a lot of the technology with its flash and impressive displays hasn’t been fully replicated as of yet, but it is accurate to say that the medical field has been growing in leaps and bounds throughout the decades as new and innovative ways to care for people and help their many ailments have been discovered and refined. Whether or not we’ll ever see every bit of the technology replicated is difficult to say for certain, but at the moment there are several devices that prove that the medical field does have comparable technology to Star Trek.

Here are a few devices that we already have that mirror what is seen on Star Trek.

4. Medical tricorder

While we don’t necessarily have the same handheld device that is seen in the show and the movies, there are devices that are very close to this and yet aren’t always seen by a lot of people. The technology that is available in this current era isn’t going to be entirely like that seen on the show for a lot of reasons, and one of them is that the time and work it takes to refine the technology and make certain that it’s going to work in the field is extensive and the responsibility of making sure it works is taken very seriously. But one of these days when a doctor can carry a handheld device like this it might be seen as a humongous boon since it will do the work of many other machines that were needed in the past.

3. Hypospray

In the real world, this is called a jet injector and it’s been around for quite some time. While the technology on the show has advanced to a ridiculous level it’s still easy to think that Star Trek was taking this as their own when it had already been invented. It’s not something that many people know about unless they study or are a part of the medical field, but it’s a fairly common piece of equipment that has been in use for a while now. It’s not something that a lot of people like to see coming since some people tend to think that it’s going to hurt when in reality it’s no worse than a needle injection, and in some cases might actually be safer.

It’s very easy to say that this hasn’t been perfected yet and that it’s nothing like what has been used in Star Trek at the moment but the technology is still sound and it has been used in surgical procedures to help out when needed. The day that a complete visor can be used in order to help a surgeon see things in a clear and concise manner during surgery doesn’t feel too far away, but at the current time, it is enough to state that the technology is being worked on and that it is in use. It will certainly be interesting to see if this application is ever taken any further and used in other ways that could benefit other workplaces.

1. Vital signs monitor

This kind of technology has been used for quite a while now and is getting updated constantly in order to better serve patients and make certain that their vital signs are kept under constant surveillance so that they can be given the proper care. While they’re not quite to the standard of those used in Star Trek the technology still surpasses what was being used when the show first came out. One can only imagine what will happen once said technology does become available and how much more effective a diagnostic bed will be when it can act as a type of x-ray machine as well. That will certainly be a sight.

To be perfectly honest a lot of the medical devices seen in Star Trek are given a lot more flash than is needed at times, but the thought that such technology might one day be seen as common is more than a little interesting, not to mention intriguing.

A lover of great stories and epic tales, Tom is a fan of old and new-school ideas. As a novelist and a screenwriter, he enjoys promoting one story or another. With 18k+ articles and 40 novels written, Tom knows a little something about storytelling.

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