LAS VEGAS, Jan. 12 (UPI) -- A $10 million prize is being offered for the creation of a Star Trek-style medical "tricorder" tool for diagnosing disease.
The X PRIZE Foundation and Qualcomm Foundation said the prize, announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, will go to the team that "develops a mobile platform that most accurately diagnoses a set of 15 diseases across 30 consumers in three days," a release from the the two foundations said.
The device must be light enough to be portable, weighing no more than 5 pounds.
The prize is intended to spur innovation in areas such as artificial intelligence and wireless sensing to create a device like the medical tricorder of Star Trek fame to make medical diagnoses independent of a physician or healthcare provider, backers of the prize said.
"Health care today certainly falls far short of the vision portrayed in Star Trek," Paul Jacobs, chairman of the Qualcomm Foundation, said.
"By sponsoring the Qualcomm Tricorder X PRIZE competition, the Qualcomm Foundation will stimulate the imaginations of entrepreneurs, engineers, scientists and doctors to create wireless health services and technologies that improve lives, increase consumer access to healthcare and drive efficiencies in the healthcare system."
