The Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE was an

inducement prize contest An inducement prize contest (IPC) is a competition that awards a cash prize for the accomplishment of a feat, usually of engineering. IPCs are typically designed to extend the limits of human ability. Some of the most famous IPCs include the Long ...

announced on May 10, 2011, sponsored by

Qualcomm Qualcomm Incorporated () is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Diego, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. It creates semiconductors, software and services related to wireless techn ...

Foundation. It officially launched on January 10, 2012. The $10 million prize is awarded for creating a mobile device that can "diagnose patients better than or equal to a panel of board certified physicians". The name is taken from the tricorder device in ''

Star Trek ''Star Trek'' is an American science fiction media franchise created by Gene Roddenberry, which began with the Star Trek: The Original Series, series of the same name and became a worldwide Popular culture, pop-culture Cultural influence of ...

'' which can be used to instantly diagnose ailments. The focus of the competition guidelines was towards clinical symptoms, versus accurate measurement of test values. Although no team successfully met all the requirements of the grand prize, the competition was concluded in April 2017 when the XPRIZE Foundation awarded reduced prizes to the strongest performing teams. For the first time at any XPRIZE, the leftover funds from the main prize purse were earmarked for further development, consumer testing, and commercialization of tricorder prototypes for the two finalists and four semi-finalist teams as part of the Post Prize Initiative.

Prize details

The Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE originally offered a

US$ The United States dollar (Currency symbol, symbol: Dollar sign, $; ISO 4217, currency code: USD) is the official currency of the United States and International use of the U.S. dollar, several other countries. The Coinage Act of 1792 introdu ...

7 million grand prize,

2 million second prize, and

1 million third prize to the best among the finalists offering an automatic non-invasive health diagnostics system that meets the following requirements. The final contest rules deviated from a single portable device and allowed the contestants to utilize multiple devices (as a system), thus moving away from the concept of a Star Trek tricorder. This rule expansion allowed teams to utilize some existing off-the-shelf add-ons or modifications to meet the aims of the competition. *Weighs no more than 5 pounds (2.3 kg) *Able to autonomously diagnose 13 medical conditions (12 diseases and the 'absence of conditions'), including

anemia Anemia (also spelt anaemia in British English) is a blood disorder in which the blood has a reduced ability to carry oxygen. This can be due to a lower than normal number of red blood cells, a reduction in the amount of hemoglobin availabl ...

atrial fibrillation Atrial fibrillation (AF, AFib or A-fib) is an Heart arrhythmia, abnormal heart rhythm (arrhythmia) characterized by fibrillation, rapid and irregular beating of the Atrium (heart), atrial chambers of the heart. It often begins as short periods ...

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a type of progressive lung disease characterized by chronic respiratory symptoms and airflow limitation. GOLD defines COPD as a heterogeneous lung condition characterized by chronic respiratory s ...

(COPD),

diabetes Diabetes mellitus, commonly known as diabetes, is a group of common endocrine diseases characterized by sustained high blood sugar levels. Diabetes is due to either the pancreas not producing enough of the hormone insulin, or the cells of th ...

leukocytosis Leukocytosis is a condition in which the white cell (leukocyte) count is above the normal range in the blood. It is frequently a sign of an inflammatory response, most commonly the result of infection, but may also occur following certain parasit ...

pneumonia Pneumonia is an Inflammation, inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as Pulmonary alveolus, alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of Cough#Classification, productive or dry cough, ches ...

otitis media Otitis media is a group of Inflammation, inflammatory diseases of the middle ear. One of the two main types is acute otitis media (AOM), an infection of rapid onset that usually presents with ear pain. In young children this may result in pullin ...

sleep apnea Sleep apnea (sleep apnoea or sleep apnœa in British English) is a sleep-related breathing disorder in which repetitive Apnea, pauses in breathing, periods of shallow breathing, or collapse of the upper airway during sleep results in poor vent ...

, and

urinary tract infection A urinary tract infection (UTI) is an infection that affects a part of the urinary tract. Lower urinary tract infections may involve the bladder (cystitis) or urethra (urethritis) while upper urinary tract infections affect the kidney (pyel ...

. The contest rules focused more on diagnosis versus monitoring or treatment of medical conditions. *Able to continuously record and stream the 5 main vital signs:

blood pressure Blood pressure (BP) is the pressure of Circulatory system, circulating blood against the walls of blood vessels. Most of this pressure results from the heart pumping blood through the circulatory system. When used without qualification, the term ...

heart rate Heart rate is the frequency of the cardiac cycle, heartbeat measured by the number of contractions of the heart per minute (''beats per minute'', or bpm). The heart rate varies according to the body's Human body, physical needs, including the nee ...

oxygen saturation Oxygen saturation (symbol SO2) is a relative measure of the concentration of oxygen that is Dissolution (chemistry), dissolved or carried in a given medium as a proportion of the maximal concentration that can be dissolved in that medium at the g ...

respiratory rate The respiratory rate is the rate at which breathing occurs; it is set and controlled by the respiratory center of the brain. A person's respiratory rate is usually measured in breaths per minute. Measurement The respiratory rate in humans is mea ...

and

temperature Temperature is a physical quantity that quantitatively expresses the attribute of hotness or coldness. Temperature is measurement, measured with a thermometer. It reflects the average kinetic energy of the vibrating and colliding atoms making ...

. The name is taken from the tricorder device from the science fiction TV series ''

'' which can be used to instantly diagnose ailments. The prize was initially announced by the

X PRIZE Foundation XPRIZE Foundation is a non-profit organization that designs and hosts public competitions intended to encourage technological development. The XPRIZE mission is to bring about "radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity" through incentiv ...

on 10 May 2011 and subsequently launched on 10 January 2012 at CES 2012. Devices were sent to the

University of California San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego in communications material, formerly and colloquially UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California, United States. Es ...

to be independently tested on patients during the winter and spring of 2015, and again in late 2016 at the Altman Clinical and Translational Research Institute (ACTRI) at UCSD.

Final round

The two teams to compete in consumer testing round: *Dynamical Biomarkers Group (Taiwan), Team led by Chung-Kang Peng of the

Harvard Medical School Harvard Medical School (HMS) is the medical school of Harvard University and is located in the Longwood Medical and Academic Area, Longwood Medical Area in Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1782, HMS is the third oldest medical school in the Un ...

. *Final Frontier Medical Devices (USA) - Team led by brothers Basil and George Harris, founders of Basil Leaf Technologies.

Teams selected

The 10 teams to be selected to compete are: *Aezon (USA) - Student engineers team from

Johns Hopkins University The Johns Hopkins University (often abbreviated as Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1876 based on the European research institution model, J ...

partnering with the Center for Bioengineering Innovation & Design. *Cloud DX (Canada) - Team from medical devices company Cloud DX, Inc and led by company chief medical officer Sonny Kohli. *Danvantri (India) - Team from technology company American Megatrends India and led by Sridharan Mani. *DMI (USA) - Team led by Eugene Y. Chan of the DNA Medicine Institute partnering with

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

, the

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in 1887 and is part of the United States Department of Health and Human Service ...

and the

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation The Gates Foundation is an American private foundation founded by Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates. Based in Seattle, Washington, it was launched in 2000 and is reported to be List of wealthiest charitable foundations, the third largest char ...

. *Dynamical Biomarkers Group (Taiwan) - Team led by Chung-Kang Peng of the

. *Final Frontier Medical Devices (USA) - Team led by brothers Basil and George Harris, founders of Basil Leaf Technologies. *

MESI The MESI protocol is an invalidate-based cache coherence protocol, and is one of the most common protocols that support write-back caches. It is also known as the Illinois protocol due to its development at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Ch ...

(

Slovenia Slovenia, officially the Republic of Slovenia, is a country in Central Europe. It borders Italy to the west, Austria to the north, Hungary to the northeast, Croatia to the south and southeast, and a short (46.6 km) coastline within the Adriati ...

) - Team from medical device company

, partnering with Jozef Stefan Institute, D.Labs, and Gigodesign, led by Jakob Susteric. *SCANADU (USA) - Team from SCANADU, led by Walter De Brouwer. *SCANurse (UK) - Team from medical company SCANurse, led by Anil Vaidya. *Zensor (Ireland) - Team from medical company Intelesens, led by Jim McLaughlin.

Conclusion of the contest

In the end, no team met all the requirements needed to win the full prize purse for a minimally invasive health diagnostics system that could meet the guidelines of diagnosis set forth by the contest rules. In April 2017

made the following awards for a total of $3.7 million: * $2.6 million to Final Frontier Medical Devices as the highest performing team * $1 million to Dynamical Biomarkers Group for second place * $100,000 to Cloud DX as the first Bold Epic Innovator, "in recognition of exponential technological progress in the field of consumer-focused medical technologies, and potential for expanding access to healthcare when deployed at scale". The rest of the original $10 million prize purse was diverted to ongoing consumer testing to get tricorder technology into the hands of patients ($3.8 million) and adapting tricorders for use in hospitals in developing countries ($1.6 million).

References

External links