Now the Star Trek Tricorder? Mobile Phones as serious medical instruments

I love the way reality starts to mimick the fictional world. We've seen Maxwell Smart's shoephone turn into our current mobile phone, James Bond's GPS map from Goldfinger and his text messaging wristwatch from The Spy Who Loved Me morph into our mobile phones. So now we get again a step further ("going where no one has gone before.."). The Star Trek "Tricorder" measuring instrument. We've seen many PDAs and smartphones taking on some of the computing and communication abilities that the fictional Tricorder had, but this week's The Economist talks of projects to turn regular cameraphones into microscopes for the developing world - and better than microscopes, these would also be networked.

At this point the attachments are prototypes (lenses added to a standard phone) but the scientists expect more commercial models will become available for something like 100 dollars a piece. Then doctors and even minimally trained medical staff can get benefits of microscopes in diagnosing diseases etc, by connecting their cameraphone to these gadgets.

Pretty cool..  "These are the voyages..."

Comments

[Martin]

Hi Tomi,

Wow, a striking application! Even in Europe and the U.S. that could be very very interesting for schools to get more involvement of pupil in biology and other classes.

Cheers,
Martin

[Tomi Ahonen]

Hi Martin

Yeah, certainly. There is that curiosity within most kids but it often is drilled out of us as we grow up. Yes, if we could get say the biology teacher to have one or two in a given high school, so kids could connect their own mobile phone to it, and use the microscope attachment as a tool to feed their curiosity, it could well spark more interest in matters scientific. Ha-ha, over the weekend there was a story in perhaps the Financial Times or Intenational Herald Tribune, that the students in Japan are moving away from studying science, math and engineering, and the Japanese government is already concerned.

And I think always of my private test-lab, my nephews and nieces. One of my nieces is for example a very active girl scout and into all things around bugs and spiders and creepy-crawly animals. I bet her scout troop could find a lot of use for a microscope attachment, that could be taken to scouting camp and study pollution and all kinds of things.

So very true. I didn't even think of it from that angle. And I remember the problem with a "real" microscope was a) it was too expensive (a "real tool") to take outside for example; and b) it was too static, had to stand firmly on a table. But if kids could also use the attachment out in the real world, nature, etc, again it would enhance its appeal.

Lets see how it develops

Thanks for writing Martin

Tomi :-)