Star Trek: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Tricorders

What medical professionals do today by employing an array of tests, techniques, and technologies has been pretty much scaled down to the one belt-clippable or over-the-shoulder carriable in Star Trek. The vision of such diagnostic ease has inspired many to translate the on-screen dream of the medical tricorder into a real-life lifesaver.

In 2012, the XPRIZE Foundation, a non-profit that does its best to promote a Gene Roddenberry-esque "equitable" and "hopeful" "future of abundance for all," launched the Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE. Teams were challenged to create a tricorder-like device that could accurately diagnose ten core medical conditions such as atrial fibrillation (an abnormal heart rhythm), diabetes, or stroke, and three elective conditions including hypertension, mononucleosis (glandular fever), and HIV. The device also had to be capable of monitoring five vital signs in real-time.

Five years later, no participant had met all the criteria for the $10 million grand prize, but the trekly named Final Frontier Medical Devices won the first prize of $2.6 million for DxtER — an at home medical instrument kit with AI diagnostic app. Voyager's EMH, Robert Picardo, even opened the awards ceremony with the required "Please state the nature of the medical emergency".