The venerable Star Trek tricorder, often imitated but never actually shown 100% emulating the one demonstrated in science fiction, could net an inventor $US10 million if they’re able to produce the real thing.
Unsurprisingly, the competition to create such a device is called the Tricorder X Prize. Much like the Ansari and Automotive X prizes that have preceded it, this one would motivate inventors using the age-old carrot and stick approach. A $US10 million carrot, that is.
Obviously, this competition goes far beyond satiating a generation of geeks who have longed to diagnose themselves and loved ones during Enterprise sick bay reenactments. If a tricorder can indeed be made, it would have incredible, paradigm-shifting implications within the health care industry, both in the developed and developing world.
Potential sponsor Qualcomm and the X Prize Foundation are currently hashing out the specifics for this competition, which is scheduled to kick off in 2012. Ideally, this competition would produce the real deal—on-the-spot medical diagnostics, instantly—as there are already a fair number of portable ultrasound and scanner devices on the market already. [MSNBC, Image: NASA]
Matt
Monday, May 16, 2011 at 9:53 AMOnly $10M!?! Anything less than $500M is not worth it, as this device would be worth Billions. Any boffins who has created a working prototype… do NOT sell off the IP/Rights to it.
Caesar Wong
Monday, May 16, 2011 at 12:30 PM$10m would probably only contribute toward the cost of actually producing such a thing. I imagine that the solution will ultimately come from Academia or some other source which has access to speculative investors.
A competition strikes me as being a pretty inefficient way of doing it, since co-operation and pooled resources would provide a much greater likelihood of success than competition.
Chinosts
Monday, May 16, 2011 at 1:58 PMNice point Caesar…
I often wonder, along the same lines of though, when I see the large cancer research or MS Research centre.. shouldnt these kinds of things be done on a global scale rather than just localised to a country or city? There should be a global centre for Cancer Research for example.. Maybe in Geneva or someplace neutral..