'Dr. McCoy. Report to sickbay immediately!'

Or as the Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE has it: "the first consumer-focused, mobile diagnostic device inspired by the medical tricorder of Star Trek". We, here at Evertiq, generally do not report on awards, prizes and such, but the Tricorder challenge and the final prototypes had us interested. Final Frontier Medical Devices (received USD 2.5M) and Dynamical Biomarkers Group (received USD 1M) both nearly met the challenging audacious benchmarks for diagnosing the 13 disease states, a press release states. After four years of development, team Final Frontier created DxtER (pronounced “Dexter”), an artificial intelligence-based engine that learns to diagnose medical conditions by integrating learnings from clinical emergency medicine with data analysis from actual patients. DxtER includes a group of non-invasive sensors that are designed to collect data about vital signs, body chemistry and biological functions. This information is then synthesized in the device’s diagnostic engine to make a quick and accurate assessment. “It is very exciting that our vision of mobile, personalized patient-centric healthcare is getting closer to becoming a reality thanks to the great work of the Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE teams,” said Dr. Paul E. Jacobs, executive chairman of Qualcomm Incorporated. “Creating technology breakthroughs in an industry as complex as healthcare is quite a milestone, and what these teams accomplished is a great stepping stone to making mobile healthcare a viable option across the world.”