Want an extra ten million dollars in your pocket? Well, it’s up for grabs – and all you have to do is design a working tricorder.
The newest X-Prize contest has officially kicked off. While it was announced back in June of last year, and the final details won’t be available until September of this year, entrants are now able to officially register and participate in the tech race to develop a piece of technology that could change the face of modern medicine today.
It won’t be easy, and the requirements will be stiff, but the Chairman and the CEO of the X-Prize foundation still state that they will be happy to lose this ten million dollars.
Among other things, in order to win the contest and claim ten million cool ones, a functional machine must be presented that:
- is capable of measuring key health metrics
- weighs less than five pounds
- is able to diagnose 15 to-be-determined diseases
- can be used at home by the common person
Is it possible?
There was a time when people said it wasn’t possible to fly, but today, jets and various types of aircraft fill our skies. There was a time when people said man couldn’t travel to space. Just a few short steps later in the grand timeline of mankind, man not only went into space, but walked on the surface of the most inhospitable surface to ever be felt by humans. Designing and then building a tricorder, or a similar machine, is not only possible, but highly probable.
For the first time in history, man has the technologies to match his thoughts. We can send data on streams of light, live and work in a station positioned miles above the Earth, make a phone call from the middle of the ocean, transport thousands of people in steel tubes that fly through the air, and chat in real-time with people who live on the other side of the world. And more advances come daily. We already use a variety of non-invasive and even wireless scanning and diagnostic equipment throughout the medical world; combining them all might be the only real hurdle involved.
Still, only time will tell, but I’ll bet that ten million won’t be sitting around for too long.
