Ten teams in finals of $10 mn diagnostics device development competition

Ten teams were today named finalists in a $10-million prize competition to create a lightweight, portable, wireless device capable of  diagnosing and monitoring a variety of medical conditions - from anaemia to HIV and stroke, USA Today reported.

The announcement was made during the opening ceremony of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society International Conference in Chicago.

Four of the finalists in the Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize contest are from the US, while others are from Europe, Asia and Canada. Those selected represent non-profit groups, academia, start-ups, and established device manufacturers, according to Erik Viirre, technical and medical director for the competition. He added.

Over 300 teams from across the world joined the Star Trek-inspired challenge initially. The launch happened in January 2012, which was followed by 21 official team submissions.

The next step on the way to the finals would be further evaluations by a panel of experts, diagnostic evaluations and consumer testing. The top three winners would be named in early 2016 - the 50th anniversary of the sci-fi TV series' debut. The winners would take away prizes worth $7 million, $2 million and $1 million, respectively.

The charitable arm of mobile technology company Qualcomm has provided the prize money.

The Qualcomm Tricorder XPRISE challenge involves developing a mobile device capable of diagnosing and interpreting a set of 15 medical conditions and measuring five vital signs of health,.

The five vital signs are blood pressure, heart rate, oxygen saturation, respiratory rate and temperature, while the 15 medical conditions cover atrial fibrillation, stroke, pneumonia, diabetes, hepatitis A and tuberculosis among others. The device could consist of any number of different components, but they cannot weigh over five pounds, and would also need to provide a way for consumers to store and share their information, which would be accessible remotely via the internet.

While the selected teams had not yet revealed too much information about their proposed devices, many of them planned to utilise microfluidics to detect disease biomarkers in biological material such as blood or breath.

For instance, a team from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, US, is developing a microfluidic device that will use PCR to detect the presence of pathogens. It would then wirelessly communicate this information to a smartphone, which would combine it with information on vital signs collected by a second wearable device.