A team led by Matrix panellist Jim McLaughlin has joined forces with a Silicon Valley Medtech company in a bid to create a real life Tricorder – the fictional hand held device featured in Star Trek.
The local team, called zensor, and the US team, Scanadu, were named as two of ten Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE finalists last August. XPRIZE is a 3.5-year global competition, sponsored by the Qualcomm Foundation, in which teams develop a consumer-focused, mobile device much like the medical Tricorder of Star Trek® fame, moving it from turning science fiction to science reality – ‘Healthcare in the Palm of your Hand’. To win the prize, teams must successfully create a device capable of diagnosing and interpreting a set of 15 medical conditions and capturing five vital health metrics.
Scanadu and zensor have now combined to create Team Scanadu/Intelesens, bringing together complementary expertise from both teams in their continued quest for the $10M prize. Team zensor brings its wealth of experience in medical device design, regulatory approval, manufacturing, R&D, quality and commercialization and will combine this with the imagination, vision and entrepreneurial accomplishments of Team Scanadu led by Walter De Brouwer.
“In the space of wearable medical technology, there is a convergence of traditional medical devices and consumer products, in more and more areas of functionality,” said Jim McLaughlin, CTO of Intelesens and Director at NIBEC – University of Ulster. “By working together and playing on each other’s strengths, Team Scanadu/Intelesens expects to bring the reliability and accuracy of many areas of the medical device industry to the fast-paced world of the consumer.”
“The challenge we are trying to solve for the Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE competition is an extremely difficult one, and it requires enormous effort and collaboration,” said Walter de Brouwer, CEO of Scanadu. “What first attracted us to the competition was the promise of bringing together some of the brightest minds in the world to create a device that could give consumers access to their own health data, and we are thrilled to join forces with team zensor for the remainder of the competition to achieve this incredible feat together.”
Team Scanadu/Intelesens has designed cutting-edge, wearable, vital signs monitoring and diagnostics technology. It has integrated consumer-focused innovation and user interface experience to the technology which promises to transform the iconic, fictional Star Trek Tricorder into a powerful, user-friendly diagnostic tool providing fast diagnosis and facilitating rapid clinical intervention.
Intelesens CTO Jim McLaughlin leads the zensor team, while their Principal Engineer Ian McCullough delivers the technical lead and project management and commercial manager Shannon Wolf Montague is working with the team to bring the new technology to market.
Atrial Fibrillation screening and diagnosis is a key application of both the XPRIZE and Intelesens’s CE marked device. They are joined by a team from Randox, headed by Dr. Mary-Jo Kurth, while Dr. David McEneaney, Consultant Cardiologist at Craigavon Area Hospital provides the clinical foundation and expertise.
CHIC (Connected Health Innovation Centre) based in NIBEC at the University of Ulster facilitate the team contributions. To round out the team, Northern Ireland company CIGA Healthcare is providing its expertise in Self-Test Products.
As part of the final round of the contest, teams will compete in both diagnostic experience evaluations and consumer testing at the University of California, San Diego’s Clinical and Translational Research Institute (CTRI), planned for June 2015. The final judging and awards ceremony is scheduled to take place in early 2016.