September 12, 2014 • 38 mins
In Star Trek, the tricorder is an all-purpose sensor array that can diagnose a person in moments. Is a real tricorder part of our near future?
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking, to be one, and welcome to Forward Thinking,
the podcast that looks at the future and says, everyone's
a superhero, Everyone's a Captain Kirk. I'm Jonathan Strickland, and
(00:22):
I'm Joe McCormick. Hey guys, Hey Jonathan. So you know
what my favorite science fiction franchise with an overall optimistic
perspective on what the future is gonna be happens to
really be one. You know, you're right, But my second
favorite is Star Trek. The Trek, the Trek, the one
(00:45):
and only. Uh yeah, wait, wait, hold on, you got
to say on the air, and people want to know,
original series next Generation Voyager? Where are you? Uh? You know,
when it comes down to the actual episode, I'm a
next generation guy. When it comes to the films, I'm
an original series guy. Um. I never really got into
(01:07):
Voyager that much, although I understand it. If I had
stuck with it, I probably would have enjoyed it. I
actually really like Deep Space nine. Yeah. I thought that
the political elements of Deep Space nine were really interesting. Yeah.
So we've talked about Star Trek tech on this show before. Yes,
we have, and there's got to be a reason we're
bringing up Star Trek again. Might it be there's a
(01:28):
specific piece of technology on the enterprise that we want
to delve into. Yes, those elevators, those lifts are amazing.
They are They're kind of like wantavaders. They can go
sideways or diagonal ways. Okay, we want to talk about
tri orders tricorders. Yeah. As it turns out, the tri
quarter has been getting a lot of attention recently, mainly
(01:50):
because of the announcement of specific teams that are competing
to make a real one. Wait wait wait, wait wait, yeah,
make a real one. Well, I mean it helps first
to explained what a tricorder is, right, to understand why
making a real one is kind of a big thing
in the first place. Yeah, okay, So a triquarter is
a medical device mainly, although it can also be just
(02:10):
an environmental sensor. Yeah. It's a scientific device in general,
but frequently used in medicine. Yeah. Uh. Mr Spock often
carried a tricorder on away missions. They would beam down
to a planet. Mr Spock would look at the tricorder
and say, Captain, it appears we can breathe very useful information,
but seriously though it had. It had environmental sensors. Really
(02:32):
it was. It was like a magic sensor that could
detect anything. It was. It was a little bit of
a sonic screwdriver, it really was. It was very much
like the Doctor Who Sonic Screwdriver, and that it was
capable of doing whatever the plot needed it too. But
within the context of the shows, it either would give
you information about your environment, whether something might be toxic
(02:52):
or there might be contaminants in the environment. You you
might be able to tell if someone else had visited
that same place that you visited. Let's say that it's
a planet where it's pre warped technology planet, so the
prime directive is in full effect, and you detect there's
a signature here that states that we're not the first
people to visit. That would be kind of a typical
(03:13):
Star Trek plot. But like you said, Lauren, more frequently
than not, you also saw the triquarter being used in
a medical capacity when Dr Bones McCoy would be using
it to determine what sort of terrible ailment had befallen
a crew member before harassibly saying that he needed to
treat it. In some medieval terrible way. So the example
(03:37):
I have here is, according to this in and Smith,
you have been stabbed by a klingon. That would be
a diagnosis he would use after using the probe on
a tricorder right right, which would be able to tell
I don't know things about their vital signs or what's
going on with their internal organs. Yeah, and detect anything
like a like a pathogen, any sort of thing that
(03:57):
would would affect the health in either a negative or
a positive way. So wait a minute, No, I'm trying
to remember. To get a reading on someone, did he
have to insert it directly into their torso he did not.
There was a non invasive tool. There were versions that
had a separate little uh probe, but it wasn't a
(04:18):
probe that would actually be invasive. He would just you
would hold it closer to the person. You would cover
it near a person. It would make a little bloom
kind of kind of noise. Yeah, and you you were
required that you were required to move your hand while
doing it. Right. It wasn't like you just held it
out to someone and you know, And this kind of
ties into our discussions about in science fiction, you often
have to have the actors do things so they don't
(04:39):
feel like total idiots just standing there. What type of
scanning device works better when you jiggle it around? Apparently
a tricorder does. In the Star Trek universe. And these
things look like giant cassette players. Do you get Do
you guys remember cassette players? Yeah? Yeah, the kind of
where you had to actually hit the stop ejective. Hey,
we're from the eighties, not look, I'm just saying fourteen
(05:00):
and yeah, I'm just saying like, like like, by the
time you guys were around, there were more advanced versions
of the basic tape player available. When I'm thinking about
the old gray and silver ones that had the big
window that you hit and it would pop the cassette out,
that's kind of what these early tricorders. Later next generation
(05:20):
it was more cell phone size. Yeah, okay, but surely
there's nothing like that in real life. Is there like
just this wonderful all purpose environmental medical sensor device. Well,
there's certainly people working on making it a real thing.
We're we're not quite at the point where someone has
a device that has all the capability of the tricorder.
(05:42):
We certainly don't have one that is able to do
everything from diagnose a patient to tell you whether or
not there are toxins in the environment, to telling you
if someone had been there recently. We don't have anything
like that, but we do have lots of advanced sensors,
I mean, medical technology in general, at least the the
basic opponents have all evolved quite a bit over the
(06:03):
last couple of decades, although you may not see that
reflected in any individual hospitals technology. Some hospitals are relying
on technology that's uh, you know, several years old. Sure, well,
but you know, the the need for or the desire
for having non invasive technology, and especially noninvasive technology that
patients themselves could use at home is tremendous and and
(06:27):
that is where the X Prize comes in absolutely. So
you guys, before we even talk about the X Prize,
I mean, we've talked about wearables on this this show before, right,
We've talked about wearables that can monitor things like your
heart rate. That sort of stuff very common, and it
shows that people are really interested in getting data about themselves.
(06:50):
So the ex Prize is taking it to that next step.
The idea of not just you know, what your heart
rate is, but things like your respiration rate, how much
oxygen is actually in your blood, really interesting vitals that
go beyond this this sort of simplified approach that we
see in things like fitness trackers. But the fact that
(07:12):
fitness trackers are so popular shows that people are really
interested in this and that it could in fact be
a huge benefit if used responsibly. That's something that I'm
sure I'm going to mention a couple of times in
this episode because one of the things I like to
caution people about is don't ever assume that technology is
going to completely replace the experienced and informed opinion of
(07:38):
a medical professional. Oh, certainly not. And that's not that's
not what they're going for here, right, It's just that's
the way a lot of people tend to interpret it.
It's not the fault of the organization. It's not the
fault of the different UH teams that are competing in
this process. But often we think, oh, I have this gadget,
and now I don't ever have to worry about going
(07:58):
to a doctor unless something goes hard, doably wrong. We
have this kind of reactionary approach to medicine here in
the United States, and that's just something I don't want
to advocate for. UH. I would frame it more in
these terms. It's not so much that you have a
gadget that replaces a doctor, but you have a gadget
that replaces Google and hypochondria and and it also it
(08:18):
also can augment what a doctor is able to do
if you are able to go like if you start
to see something that worries you, you can go to
a doctor and say, I don't know what this means,
but this these are the readings and getting so does
this mean that there's something I should worry about? And
from that point for where the doctor can handle things
and make sure that you're getting the treatment you need
(08:39):
if you need it, you may not, And that's that's
the important thing to remember. Now. The really cool thing
is that you have this ex prize in the first place.
And anyone who's been following technology and science has probably
heard of the ex prize. UH. It really started back
in the nineteen nineties, and the original focus of it
was to kind of kick start private space exploration projects, right.
(09:04):
It was that whole prize of will give a certain
amount of money to whichever team can have a spacecraft
that can visit space within the span of two weeks.
This was before SpaceX and etcetera. Yeah, yeah, so this
is the sort of thing that was supposed to fuel
that kind of innovation and it worked. We now have
private companies that are working on developing stuff that goes
(09:26):
out into space, some of which, like SpaceX, has already
done it successfully a couple of times. So then you
had X Prizes come up for other types of uses
of technology, other innovation, not just space exploration, and one
of those was the the Tricorder Challenge, which is sponsored
by Qualcom. It has a ten million dollar prize for
(09:50):
whichever team can create a tricorder that performs according to
the contest criteria, and they set out exactly what this
device is supposed to be able to do, and they
leave a lot of the implementation up to the actual teams,
so no one is forced into a specific form factor
apart from some weight requirements. Right, So first you have
(10:12):
to be able to diagnose twelve required core health conditions.
Now I'm just gonna list some of these. These are
not all of them, but it includes anemia, diabetes, hepatitis,
a pneumonia, sleep apnea, tuberculosis. It has to be able
to detect all of those, so they're twelve in total,
and that's not an option. You have to figure out
(10:34):
how your device can detect such a thing present in
a patient that's using it, sure, and it also has
to be able to detect the absence of anything wrong, right,
It has to be able to tell you that if
the person uses it and they don't have any of
these conditions, that everything is far relatively normal and healthy,
probably at least physically. Mentally. It's still just a roll
(10:57):
of the dice, folks. Now, on top of the twelve
required ones, you have to pick three elective conditions. So
this is like an elective in a college course where
you think, all right, you, these are the course requirements.
These are the courses you have to take in order
to graduate. And then here are the ones you can
choose from as your electives. Same sort of thing. So
(11:18):
they have to pick three of one of the following
and this is just a selection of them. Allergens, cholesterol screening,
food born illnesses, HIV screening, hypertension, melanoma, osteoporosis, pertussis, shingles
or strep throat and more. So you have to pick
three of those. Uh, there are a couple of other
(11:39):
choices that are also on the list, and then beyond that,
the device must also be able to get accurate readings
on five vital signs, which those are blood pressure, heart rate,
oxygen saturation, respiratory rate, and your body temperature. The prototype
device cannot weigh more than five pounds, A big thing, Yeah,
(12:00):
because I mean it might be a lot easier to
do this if you build this giant right right, Yeah,
you're or a bed like you Just the patient lays
in here and all the sensors are are part of
the bed, and then we lay this, you know, covering
over the has even more sensors on it. Obviously, that
would not win in this particular approach. Can the device
(12:21):
be a toilet? A toilet that weighs less than five pounds?
They actually do say that that the method of getting
this information is up to the individual company. But here's
the kicker. Consumer consumer use experience is also a factor
when it comes to judging the success or failure of
the tri quarter. So it's not prioritize things that are
(12:44):
less unpleasant, Yes, exactly, Yeah, so would a consumer want
to use this device? So if it's a device that's
going to require something like a blood sample that's going
to be a bigger challenge than something that is totally noninvasive.
This means that the front teams have to take that
into consideration when they're making their designs. So it maybe
(13:04):
that you're able to get much more accurate information with
something that's invasive. But on the flip side, maybe people
wouldn't want to use it because it would mean having to,
you know, prick a finger or otherwise get a blood sample. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Maybe that there's a disposable uh liquid container that's meant
for urine samples. In fact, I've heard of some that
(13:25):
do that. So that would be one of those cases
where you measure the benefit of the metric you're looking
for and the method you're looking you're using to look
for it versus our consumers actually going to do this
or will they be turned off by the idea. So
you have to judge that as well. And then eventually
(13:47):
they're going to have tests for these things. That's actually
coming up in two thousand fifteen. We're recording this in
early September two fourteen, so next year, as the recording
of this podcast, they will be putting these two to
tests and they'll be diagnostic tests to make sure the
device does what it's supposed to do, as well as
consumer tests to make sure that people would want to
(14:08):
use it, and if it does well in those tests,
then that's what sets it above the other competitors. Eventually,
the judges will make their decisions, they'll deliberate, and in
sometime in two thousand sixteen, there will be a complete
awards ceremony where they will announce which team came up
with the winning tricorder design UH. As a part of this,
(14:31):
the FDA, the Food Drug and Drug Administration in the
United States, is also involved in this competition and is
discussing what sort of regulatory requirements would be in place
for them to get the device cleared by the FDA
so it could be used medically. And that means that
you have essentially the FDA working as a consultant in
(14:51):
your design process, which saves so much time. It's not
so much a um. You don't have to worry as
much about the submission process, the testing, and then they
get back to you and tell you what you have
to address in order to get FDA approval. I mean
that will still be part of it, but this helps
smooth out some of the potential roadblocks along the way,
(15:12):
which I think is pretty cool. Okay, well, so do
we have any idea yet who's actually in the running
and what they're working on. Yeah. It's actually kind of
funny because, um, when I recorded the video that goes
along with this audio podcast, I didn't realize that at
the time, but the ten finalist teams had just been
announced and I mean possibly that day, I think, yeah,
(15:35):
I And it just so happened that I was researching
GET the day the information it came out. I didn't
know it was brand new information. I thought, oh, well,
I guess these teams have been announced for a while,
because this competition has been was has been announced for
a couple of years, right, It's not like this is
brand new, y. I think when it was announced at
the time there were two dred and fifty five teams
(15:57):
in competition. Um, later that was a narrowed to four. Yeah,
and it's now been whittled down to ten teams, so
ten teams are still competing. These teams had to make
a real commitment to be part of this competition. It's
not something that you can just enter for free. You
actually have to pay an entrance fee. Uh. And the
(16:17):
way the entrance fee worked was that the earlier you registered,
the less expensive. The fee was began at five thousand dollars.
So when I say less expensive, I'm still talking about
a healthy chunk of change. Right. Some of these teams
are little divisions of various companies. Some of them are
partnerships between companies. But if you waited, if you dragged
your feet and you waited to register, at the end
(16:38):
of the period, you were paying around twenty five thousand
dollars for your team to be part of this competition.
So pretty impressive call now and save now. Granted, keep
in mind, if you are the team that develops the
right piece of technology, it's a ten million dollar prize.
And here's the other interesting thing. I think about the
X Prizes. A lot of times the X Prize award
(17:01):
is less money than what it would have cost in
research and development to develop the the actual technology. Well,
but hopefully you're creating a piece of technology that you
that is a real investment. Yeah, it turns out that
I think a lot of teams compete not thinking oh,
we're going to make this huge amount of money at
the end of it, but rather they're competing because one
(17:22):
they really believe in the competition, they believe in the goal,
right and to they realize that if they win, it's
not so much the money that's the big the big draw,
it's the fact that you are the ex prize winner exactly.
Even just being a finalist, you might get some publicity,
like we're about to give right now. Who are some
(17:43):
of these finals? All right? So from the United States,
this is a global challenge, So we've got countries all
over the world that have teams participating. In the US
has the most teams that made it in the final
ten Uh to the tune of four teams Aison, d
m I, the final Frontier Medical Devices, Get That Star,
(18:06):
trek UH and Scana Do which start Olivia Newton John
was amazing. One of the first blog posts we ever
wrote for our website was about the Scanna Do Scout,
wasn't it. Yeah, We'll actually have some some extensive quotes
from Lauren's blog post, which is, by the way, a
fantastic read. So it was written all the way back
in two thousand thirteen, but is still absolutely relevant. So
(18:29):
you should definitely if you haven't followed the forward thinking blogs.
Go check it out. There's some great stuff on there,
some of it even I wrote. So the United Kingdom
has two teams scan Nurse and sen Sore are both
from the UK. Then you have Canada's cloud d x UH,
and you have Slovenia's Messy Simplifying Diagnostics UH. From Taiwan
(18:53):
is Dynamical Bio Markers Group and from India is Davontry.
So these are the teams that are left. These are
the final hen and they're all working on different implementations
of this. Some of them, like I said, require like
a blood sample, so that's going to make it a
more challenging approach. When it comes to that consumer use,
which are the ones that require tears. You just want
(19:16):
someone to be weeping into a device, and that tells
you whether or not you're your Well, I'd probably rather
weep into a device than bleed into it. I can
understand that, but I think I think what would be
terrible is that I if I were making such a
device and you wept into it, the only result you
would ever get as it seems you are sad, and
(19:37):
that would be well, that's not helpful at all. The
future is in your tears. Well, the interesting one to
look at right now, I think, I mean, all of
these are interesting. But like you said, Joe, we we've
actually have someone here who's looked into the Scanna do
one specifically. Yeah, And they held an Indiego go campaign
(19:59):
back for a product called This's Going to Do Scout,
which is not going to be the final product for
competition in in the tri quarter X Prize. However, it's
it's related certainly, and and it's a it's an interesting
funding project for the whole thing. The original goal for
(20:19):
the campaign was a hundred thousand dollars. Did they make it?
They raised one point six million? What high woe? Yeah,
so it was doing okay for itself. And they also
raised another ten point five million in private financing. By
the end of that ten million X Prizes looking pretty good.
(20:39):
Uh So, this, this Scout is not really intended to
to be a diagnostic tool as much as a monitoring instrument. Right,
this isn't this like you said, this isn't their tri quarter.
This is this was something that's sort of a first step,
like a good a good foundation to work toward a triquarder.
(21:01):
But it was really more about vital signs as opposed
to all this diagnostic stuff right right with it with
an emphasis on that non invasive kind of thing. Um.
You know. It's it's this little gadget like like the
size of a of a makeup compact or a hockey
puck or something like that, and you hold it between
two fingers too specific fingers um, and hold it up
(21:21):
to your forehead and it can give you all of
this vital sign stuff and it will connect automatically to
an app that will record the data, can record it
over time for you can analyze it a little bit
and can let you upload it to your your doctor
eventually if if you need to. That is still in development,
So this is all kind of hypothetical, right, Well, that's
really cool stuff. I mean the idea that you yourself
(21:43):
are completing a circuit and that's what allows this device
to actually take those readings right right this This is
where that specific part comes in because it's the thumb
and four finger of your left hand, and so you're
completing this this bio circuit. Right electrodes touching the head
and one finger function as an electric cardiogram or ECG
(22:03):
that that measures your heart rate and rhythm against the
other finger. There's a photo thesmo graph or PPG. That
is a thing. Are you making this up? That? I
feel like I've talked about it on this very show
you probably over a year ago. There's a great so many,
so many syllables. All right, So what does that do? UM?
(22:24):
It reads your blood flow through your skin, usually using
lasers or some some other kind of light based thing,
and will measure your blood's oxygen saturation. UM. There's also
an infrared thermometer touching your head that will take your temperature.
So so yeah, it's uh. It can analyze all this
(22:44):
data within like ten seconds hypothetically and send it via
bluetooth to your smartphone UM and and connect with that
app hypothetically. They'll also include like a little gidget to
connect to your map function in your phone, so that
if you do need medical attention, it can do to
you to your local doctor or hospital. Oh yeah, so
like you could say, like I'm not I'm feeling a
(23:05):
little weird, and you hold it up and then it
takes your readings and then it says, okay, well if
you need to go to the urgent care center, it
might be you know, take this route. That's kind of cool. Yeah, yeah,
although really, you know, like like we've been saying, the
real idea behind behind the scout in specifically in the
ex Prise in general is is to not you know,
direct you to a doctor, but to kind of put
(23:25):
this capacity within the hands of of consumers, right uh,
certainly for diagnostics, yeah, they said in the x Prise itself,
it says that these devices are not necessarily meant to
get to a point where you could get a prescription
based off the reading of the device, But they said
that in the future we may even have gadgets that
(23:47):
are able to do that, although you'd more likely see
that under the under the umbrella of an official medical facility,
right right, But you know, just saving time with you know,
a not having to you know, not having you have
to go to a doctor's office unnecessarily say that doctor's time,
so that they can treat patients who really need help.
(24:07):
So do you know if the name Scanna Do is
supposed to be a mashup of the movie Scanners in
the movies Zanna Do Gosh, I hope so I know
it's a reference to Zanna Do, not the movie necessarily, No,
I think it's probably the poem. But I love the idea.
I love the idea of going around on roller skates,
sing Olivia John and then your head explodes. That's what
(24:28):
I was imagining when you all were talking about this device. Yeah,
that'd be That'd be a pretty fantastic movie. Okay, someone
call Olivia Newton John. We we need this. Ye, this
is an important film, start a kickstarter. I legitimately love
Olivia Newton John, so I will brook no actual mocking
of her. Um so, no mocking. That sounds like a
great movie fantasy the same page transitions as much as
(24:49):
we all love Zanna Do and Scanners. Yes, okay, Jonathan,
I heard you met some kind of medical device heroes
at the con this weekend. I did. I actually talked
to some folks who were interested in this, some of
whom have worked on projects like this. Whether or not
they're actually part of the the X Prize, I know
one of them had been part of it. I don't
(25:10):
know if he's part of the ten teams that have
made that final cut, because while I was at Dragon Con,
that's when this announcement came out. So it's possible that
he had been part of one of the thirty some
odd teams before it got cut down to ten. But
they were talking about their reasons for getting involved in
the first place, which I think will stay true whether
they're part of the X Prize or not, because I
(25:30):
know that a lot of these um organizations are looking
at funding from various different groups, not just not just
the X Prize. And uh, he was specifically thinking about
creating a trike order like device for medical professionals to
make their jobs easier, so getting vitals would be much
more easy thing to do, and that you could continuously
(25:52):
monitor those vitals. So this would be a device that
presumably a patient would wear in some way or would
otherwise be close enough to the pay to to have
a continuous monitoring situation going on. Because he was saying,
there are a lot of issues with things like sepsis. Uh.
You know, patients who go through surgery can suffer from sepsis,
(26:12):
which is essentially blood poisoning. One of the most common
causes of that as infection that there's some sort of
infection comes up. That's why you see doctors and nurses
with face masks on. It's not so that they don't
get sick and so that they don't share their germs
with patients, right, So, uh, sepsis can be really, really
(26:34):
a dangerous situation if you if you're suffering from it,
you may you may die. It can be deadly. Especially
it's especially dangerous because it is difficult to diagnose until
there's already a problem. Absolutely, yes, it can. It can
reach its problem exactly, can reach a critical level before
you're even aware that there's something serious going on. Uh.
(26:58):
And even if you are able to you detect it,
you know, late in the game and save the patient's life.
There can be some life altering issues that result from this,
like organ dysfunction or even having to have a limb
amputated due to this. So we're talking about a really
serious issue. And the thought is that with a continuous
(27:19):
monitoring system, it can look for tiny, uh, tiny examples
of things that might indicate that there are the conditions
right for sepsis to happen, right, so that you can
monitor it much more closely and intervene earlier before it
becomes a serious issue. So if you pair this with
(27:41):
a really uh, particularly complex algorithm, something that is really
good at detecting these minute changes and raising an alert
before it becomes a serious concern. The hope is that
you save patient lives and improve quality of life post surgery.
So that seem is like a really awesome goal to me.
(28:02):
I mean, the idea of let's let's cut this down
and make sure that people are having as good a
an experience as they possibly can. I mean, surgery is
already so traumatic for so many different reasons. You want
to be able to minimize that trauma as much as
you possibly can. And on that vein, there are other
(28:23):
medical devices out there that have been proposed that aren't
TRIKE orders. They're not meant to monitor or diagnose patients,
but are rather meant to help surgeons do their work
by making fewer mistakes in the process. And what there's
one that's being developed out of the St. Michael's Hospital
(28:45):
in Toronto that's dubbed the Surgical black Box exactly. And
the idea is that it's a series of cameras that
would be set up in the surgical room, surgical theater, whatever,
microphones as well, uh and very complex computer algorithms that
would study the movements a surgeon makes in real time
(29:07):
for whatever surgical procedure it happens to be and make
sure that the surgeon is operating within the right parameters.
Uh And according to doctor Teodor Grant Sharoff, who works
at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, he did us. He
did a study where he looked at specific surgeries and
(29:27):
he looked very closely and saw that even experienced surgeons
were making up to twenty mistakes in a single surgical procedure. Now,
these mistakes might not be life altering, they might not
even be that that dangerous, They might not have any
kind of negative impact on the patient, but they were
still a mistake. And you figure, the more surgeries you
(29:48):
have to perform within a given time frame, the more
likely you are to make a mistake. Alert fatigue starts
to set in. And the idea is that this device
would this system, it's not even a device. The system
would help surgeons by alerting them before they make a mistake.
If they start to make a move that would result
in mistake, they could be alerted, they could refocus and
(30:11):
continue and thus eliminate more mistakes through a process, which
I think is pretty cool. It's also I mean, just
imagine how I I don't know how to implement that
in a way that wouldn't be incredibly distracting if you're
talking about twenty mistakes in a single procedure. Uh, then
(30:32):
if it's going to alert you twenty times in a procedure,
I mean, imagine driving a car and it's alerting you
every time you do anything that is remotely outside the norm.
So um iteration. Yeah, it would be a little that
would be a frustrating experience every time you drive on
the sidewalk I'm thinking of I actually free single time.
(30:56):
I actually know someone who had a car. I think
it was a rental are. It wasn't like their own car,
but they had a car that would chime at you
if you got to uh, like if you went above
the speed limit for an area. Now, folks, we live
in Atlanta, and if you are driving on one of
the highways in Atlanta and you're driving the speed limit,
(31:17):
you are going to cause an accident. Yeah, that was
way too slow for traffic. Most of the time, I
would be skeptical that the car accurately knows the speed
limit for any given space. Yeah. It may have even
been that it just had a setting where it would
chime if you win above, like if you win above
fifty per hour, right, and which case you'd be yeah,
(31:39):
exactly like, well, now the bombs activated, so you're just
gonna have to keep going like this forever. Um. Yeah,
it was. It was. It was maddening to ride in
that vehicle because now the person driving it seemed to
be acclimated to it, but to anyone else, they think
exactly like, if you're worrying it, then clearly it's not
(32:01):
working in the first place. But any other passenger in
that vehicle couldn't have a conversation because you just go crazy.
But anyway, I assume that maybe uh, in the case
of surgery, obviously you're talking about uh, a very delicate
line of work that has huge impact to alter the
life of the person that you're working on. So maybe
(32:21):
in that situation it would be greeted more with, you know,
a welcoming kind of of response, especially since if you
even just want to get cynical and say I'm just
gonna be totally just pragmatic. It cuts down on chances
of things like like uh, malpractice, because if you're alerted
ahead of time before it happens, then you can correct
(32:45):
and if there are any complications that happened afterward, you
may say, well, there were complications, but we have this
record here that shows that our surgeon did everything exactly right.
So you know, sometimes complications happen even if everything went
as plans planned. Yeah. I also keep in mind that
many surgeries occur over the course of hours and hours,
(33:06):
and so twenty mistakes, you know, it sounds like a lot,
perhaps if you're not thinking about the fact that I
don't know how long these surgeries took. It might have
been an eight hour periods were made. And again, when
we say mistake, it could be something really really minor
that ultimately didn't have an impact on the surgery. But
it's still something that didn't happen as planned or didn't
(33:29):
happen the way that technically it should have happened. So
that's really interesting to me too. I'm really curious to
follow this story further find out who's going to be
the winner. Um. I hope that all the different teams
are able to produce things that end up being really effective,
whether it's in the original intended implementation or it evolves
(33:49):
into something else. I think it's really exciting. This is
very interesting. I mean, I wonder how non invasive it
can get. Yeah, like, can it be something that is
literally really like the scout where you hold it to
your your temple and it's able to get a reading,
or are we going to have to have some sort
of sampling of body fluid or something. Company is also
(34:14):
creating a urine test device. Yeah. Yeah, anything that can
sample body fluids is obviously a different kind of category
than something that you're just holding up to a person
generally at them. Yeah. I mean, it's so like the
non contact waving. Do do we think that's even realistic
even in the long term. I don't know. I'm I'm
(34:35):
kind of skeptical because I don't I don't even know
how that would work if you're not even you know,
touching somebody's skin. I think that if if the sensory
technology from what I know about stuff like the ppg um,
if if laser sensoring advanced to a point that you
could really do that quick of a sweep and it
(34:57):
could accurately measure almost the way that like ultrasound works
right now, um, what's going on inside of you? Then maybe,
But that is such a science fictional concept according to
me right now that I mean, based on my albeit
limited knowledge, I can't see that happening for forty years
at least. I think. I think it requires a couple
(35:19):
of things, and both of them are are big. One
of them is, like you were saying, Lauren, the maturation
of censoring technology so that they're able to pick up
on very very subtle things very quickly and reliably. The
other is identifying what those subtle things are for the
case of every single possible disease or condition, and taking
(35:40):
into account the fact that that many things have similar symptoms,
and furthermore that there's there's also just like a lot
of noise going on. Yeah, you know, it's exactly there
could be stuff that that is outside the norm but
isn't particularly dangerous or relevant to whatever is really the cause.
I think at first it would probably be more like
like web MD, where you know, like you stand someone
(36:01):
and it's just like, well, probably you have cancer, right,
or it'll say like you either have a headache or leprosy.
Tass a coin. So I am. I'm with you, Lauren.
I'm skeptical as well, Joe, What about you? What do
you think I just said I was skeptical? Oh are
you also scold? Maybe I didn't say I thought I
implied you probably did, and I just already forgot. I
(36:24):
don't know what I'm saying is I'm skeptical about the
no the no context R. Yeah, I don't know how
that would work. Um, but I mean I'm no expert, obviously,
I guess we'll just have to wait and see. I
would love it if we are amazed and find out
that there is some sort of new way of doing
(36:44):
that that would be phenomenal. But even if that never
comes to pass, the work that these teams are doing
is really inspiring to me, so I wish them all
the best. I cannot wait to see which one of
them walks away with the prize. And UH, I really
am eager to find, doubt what what the other teams
do as well. I mean, I think, I really think
that everyone working on this is UH doing so that
(37:07):
we all stand to benefit in one way or another
from the work. So it's really exciting. If you guys
out there have any suggestions for future episodes of forward thinking,
Maybe there's some other X Prize you've always wanted to
learn more about, or maybe there's some other type of
technology or just an element of human existence and you're
thinking what's that going to be like fifty years from now,
(37:30):
hundred years from now. You should let us know. We'll
take a look at it. We'll do a podcast about it,
maybe we'll do a video about it. Drop us a
line on Twitter, on Facebook or Google Plus, or handle it.
All three is FW thinking, and we'll talk to you
again really sooner. For more on this topic in the
future of technology, visit forward thinking dot Com, brought to
(38:03):
you by Toyota. Let's Go Places
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking, to be one, and welcome to Forward Thinking,
the podcast that looks at the future and says, everyone's
a superhero, Everyone's a Captain Kirk. I'm Jonathan Strickland, and
(00:22):
I'm Joe McCormick. Hey guys, Hey Jonathan. So you know
what my favorite science fiction franchise with an overall optimistic
perspective on what the future is gonna be happens to
really be one. You know, you're right, But my second
favorite is Star Trek. The Trek, the Trek, the one
(00:45):
and only. Uh yeah, wait, wait, hold on, you got
to say on the air, and people want to know,
original series next Generation Voyager? Where are you? Uh? You know,
when it comes down to the actual episode, I'm a
next generation guy. When it comes to the films, I'm
an original series guy. Um. I never really got into
(01:07):
Voyager that much, although I understand it. If I had
stuck with it, I probably would have enjoyed it. I
actually really like Deep Space nine. Yeah. I thought that
the political elements of Deep Space nine were really interesting. Yeah.
So we've talked about Star Trek tech on this show before. Yes,
we have, and there's got to be a reason we're
bringing up Star Trek again. Might it be there's a
(01:28):
specific piece of technology on the enterprise that we want
to delve into. Yes, those elevators, those lifts are amazing.
They are They're kind of like wantavaders. They can go
sideways or diagonal ways. Okay, we want to talk about
tri orders tricorders. Yeah. As it turns out, the tri
quarter has been getting a lot of attention recently, mainly
(01:50):
because of the announcement of specific teams that are competing
to make a real one. Wait wait wait, wait wait, yeah,
make a real one. Well, I mean it helps first
to explained what a tricorder is, right, to understand why
making a real one is kind of a big thing
in the first place. Yeah, okay, So a triquarter is
a medical device mainly, although it can also be just
(02:10):
an environmental sensor. Yeah. It's a scientific device in general,
but frequently used in medicine. Yeah. Uh. Mr Spock often
carried a tricorder on away missions. They would beam down
to a planet. Mr Spock would look at the tricorder
and say, Captain, it appears we can breathe very useful information,
but seriously though it had. It had environmental sensors. Really
(02:32):
it was. It was like a magic sensor that could
detect anything. It was. It was a little bit of
a sonic screwdriver, it really was. It was very much
like the Doctor Who Sonic Screwdriver, and that it was
capable of doing whatever the plot needed it too. But
within the context of the shows, it either would give
you information about your environment, whether something might be toxic
(02:52):
or there might be contaminants in the environment. You you
might be able to tell if someone else had visited
that same place that you visited. Let's say that it's
a planet where it's pre warped technology planet, so the
prime directive is in full effect, and you detect there's
a signature here that states that we're not the first
people to visit. That would be kind of a typical
(03:13):
Star Trek plot. But like you said, Lauren, more frequently
than not, you also saw the triquarter being used in
a medical capacity when Dr Bones McCoy would be using
it to determine what sort of terrible ailment had befallen
a crew member before harassibly saying that he needed to
treat it. In some medieval terrible way. So the example
(03:37):
I have here is, according to this in and Smith,
you have been stabbed by a klingon. That would be
a diagnosis he would use after using the probe on
a tricorder right right, which would be able to tell
I don't know things about their vital signs or what's
going on with their internal organs. Yeah, and detect anything
like a like a pathogen, any sort of thing that
(03:57):
would would affect the health in either a negative or
a positive way. So wait a minute, No, I'm trying
to remember. To get a reading on someone, did he
have to insert it directly into their torso he did not.
There was a non invasive tool. There were versions that
had a separate little uh probe, but it wasn't a
(04:18):
probe that would actually be invasive. He would just you
would hold it closer to the person. You would cover
it near a person. It would make a little bloom
kind of kind of noise. Yeah, and you you were
required that you were required to move your hand while
doing it. Right. It wasn't like you just held it
out to someone and you know, And this kind of
ties into our discussions about in science fiction, you often
have to have the actors do things so they don't
(04:39):
feel like total idiots just standing there. What type of
scanning device works better when you jiggle it around? Apparently
a tricorder does. In the Star Trek universe. And these
things look like giant cassette players. Do you get Do
you guys remember cassette players? Yeah? Yeah, the kind of
where you had to actually hit the stop ejective. Hey,
we're from the eighties, not look, I'm just saying fourteen
(05:00):
and yeah, I'm just saying like, like like, by the
time you guys were around, there were more advanced versions
of the basic tape player available. When I'm thinking about
the old gray and silver ones that had the big
window that you hit and it would pop the cassette out,
that's kind of what these early tricorders. Later next generation
(05:20):
it was more cell phone size. Yeah, okay, but surely
there's nothing like that in real life. Is there like
just this wonderful all purpose environmental medical sensor device. Well,
there's certainly people working on making it a real thing.
We're we're not quite at the point where someone has
a device that has all the capability of the tricorder.
(05:42):
We certainly don't have one that is able to do
everything from diagnose a patient to tell you whether or
not there are toxins in the environment, to telling you
if someone had been there recently. We don't have anything
like that, but we do have lots of advanced sensors,
I mean, medical technology in general, at least the the
basic opponents have all evolved quite a bit over the
(06:03):
last couple of decades, although you may not see that
reflected in any individual hospitals technology. Some hospitals are relying
on technology that's uh, you know, several years old. Sure, well,
but you know, the the need for or the desire
for having non invasive technology, and especially noninvasive technology that
patients themselves could use at home is tremendous and and
(06:27):
that is where the X Prize comes in absolutely. So
you guys, before we even talk about the X Prize,
I mean, we've talked about wearables on this this show before, right,
We've talked about wearables that can monitor things like your
heart rate. That sort of stuff very common, and it
shows that people are really interested in getting data about themselves.
(06:50):
So the ex Prize is taking it to that next step.
The idea of not just you know, what your heart
rate is, but things like your respiration rate, how much
oxygen is actually in your blood, really interesting vitals that
go beyond this this sort of simplified approach that we
see in things like fitness trackers. But the fact that
(07:12):
fitness trackers are so popular shows that people are really
interested in this and that it could in fact be
a huge benefit if used responsibly. That's something that I'm
sure I'm going to mention a couple of times in
this episode because one of the things I like to
caution people about is don't ever assume that technology is
going to completely replace the experienced and informed opinion of
(07:38):
a medical professional. Oh, certainly not. And that's not that's
not what they're going for here, right, It's just that's
the way a lot of people tend to interpret it.
It's not the fault of the organization. It's not the
fault of the different UH teams that are competing in
this process. But often we think, oh, I have this gadget,
and now I don't ever have to worry about going
(07:58):
to a doctor unless something goes hard, doably wrong. We
have this kind of reactionary approach to medicine here in
the United States, and that's just something I don't want
to advocate for. UH. I would frame it more in
these terms. It's not so much that you have a
gadget that replaces a doctor, but you have a gadget
that replaces Google and hypochondria and and it also it
(08:18):
also can augment what a doctor is able to do
if you are able to go like if you start
to see something that worries you, you can go to
a doctor and say, I don't know what this means,
but this these are the readings and getting so does
this mean that there's something I should worry about? And
from that point for where the doctor can handle things
and make sure that you're getting the treatment you need
(08:39):
if you need it, you may not, And that's that's
the important thing to remember. Now. The really cool thing
is that you have this ex prize in the first place.
And anyone who's been following technology and science has probably
heard of the ex prize. UH. It really started back
in the nineteen nineties, and the original focus of it
was to kind of kick start private space exploration projects, right.
(09:04):
It was that whole prize of will give a certain
amount of money to whichever team can have a spacecraft
that can visit space within the span of two weeks.
This was before SpaceX and etcetera. Yeah, yeah, so this
is the sort of thing that was supposed to fuel
that kind of innovation and it worked. We now have
private companies that are working on developing stuff that goes
(09:26):
out into space, some of which, like SpaceX, has already
done it successfully a couple of times. So then you
had X Prizes come up for other types of uses
of technology, other innovation, not just space exploration, and one
of those was the the Tricorder Challenge, which is sponsored
by Qualcom. It has a ten million dollar prize for
(09:50):
whichever team can create a tricorder that performs according to
the contest criteria, and they set out exactly what this
device is supposed to be able to do, and they
leave a lot of the implementation up to the actual teams,
so no one is forced into a specific form factor
apart from some weight requirements. Right, So first you have
(10:12):
to be able to diagnose twelve required core health conditions.
Now I'm just gonna list some of these. These are
not all of them, but it includes anemia, diabetes, hepatitis,
a pneumonia, sleep apnea, tuberculosis. It has to be able
to detect all of those, so they're twelve in total,
and that's not an option. You have to figure out
(10:34):
how your device can detect such a thing present in
a patient that's using it, sure, and it also has
to be able to detect the absence of anything wrong, right,
It has to be able to tell you that if
the person uses it and they don't have any of
these conditions, that everything is far relatively normal and healthy,
probably at least physically. Mentally. It's still just a roll
(10:57):
of the dice, folks. Now, on top of the twelve
required ones, you have to pick three elective conditions. So
this is like an elective in a college course where
you think, all right, you, these are the course requirements.
These are the courses you have to take in order
to graduate. And then here are the ones you can
choose from as your electives. Same sort of thing. So
(11:18):
they have to pick three of one of the following
and this is just a selection of them. Allergens, cholesterol screening,
food born illnesses, HIV screening, hypertension, melanoma, osteoporosis, pertussis, shingles
or strep throat and more. So you have to pick
three of those. Uh, there are a couple of other
(11:39):
choices that are also on the list, and then beyond that,
the device must also be able to get accurate readings
on five vital signs, which those are blood pressure, heart rate,
oxygen saturation, respiratory rate, and your body temperature. The prototype
device cannot weigh more than five pounds, A big thing, Yeah,
(12:00):
because I mean it might be a lot easier to
do this if you build this giant right right, Yeah,
you're or a bed like you Just the patient lays
in here and all the sensors are are part of
the bed, and then we lay this, you know, covering
over the has even more sensors on it. Obviously, that
would not win in this particular approach. Can the device
(12:21):
be a toilet? A toilet that weighs less than five pounds?
They actually do say that that the method of getting
this information is up to the individual company. But here's
the kicker. Consumer consumer use experience is also a factor
when it comes to judging the success or failure of
the tri quarter. So it's not prioritize things that are
(12:44):
less unpleasant, Yes, exactly, Yeah, so would a consumer want
to use this device? So if it's a device that's
going to require something like a blood sample that's going
to be a bigger challenge than something that is totally noninvasive.
This means that the front teams have to take that
into consideration when they're making their designs. So it maybe
(13:04):
that you're able to get much more accurate information with
something that's invasive. But on the flip side, maybe people
wouldn't want to use it because it would mean having to,
you know, prick a finger or otherwise get a blood sample. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Maybe that there's a disposable uh liquid container that's meant
for urine samples. In fact, I've heard of some that
(13:25):
do that. So that would be one of those cases
where you measure the benefit of the metric you're looking
for and the method you're looking you're using to look
for it versus our consumers actually going to do this
or will they be turned off by the idea. So
you have to judge that as well. And then eventually
(13:47):
they're going to have tests for these things. That's actually
coming up in two thousand fifteen. We're recording this in
early September two fourteen, so next year, as the recording
of this podcast, they will be putting these two to
tests and they'll be diagnostic tests to make sure the
device does what it's supposed to do, as well as
consumer tests to make sure that people would want to
(14:08):
use it, and if it does well in those tests,
then that's what sets it above the other competitors. Eventually,
the judges will make their decisions, they'll deliberate, and in
sometime in two thousand sixteen, there will be a complete
awards ceremony where they will announce which team came up
with the winning tricorder design UH. As a part of this,
(14:31):
the FDA, the Food Drug and Drug Administration in the
United States, is also involved in this competition and is
discussing what sort of regulatory requirements would be in place
for them to get the device cleared by the FDA
so it could be used medically. And that means that
you have essentially the FDA working as a consultant in
(14:51):
your design process, which saves so much time. It's not
so much a um. You don't have to worry as
much about the submission process, the testing, and then they
get back to you and tell you what you have
to address in order to get FDA approval. I mean
that will still be part of it, but this helps
smooth out some of the potential roadblocks along the way,
(15:12):
which I think is pretty cool. Okay, well, so do
we have any idea yet who's actually in the running
and what they're working on. Yeah. It's actually kind of
funny because, um, when I recorded the video that goes
along with this audio podcast, I didn't realize that at
the time, but the ten finalist teams had just been
announced and I mean possibly that day, I think, yeah,
(15:35):
I And it just so happened that I was researching
GET the day the information it came out. I didn't
know it was brand new information. I thought, oh, well,
I guess these teams have been announced for a while,
because this competition has been was has been announced for
a couple of years, right, It's not like this is
brand new, y. I think when it was announced at
the time there were two dred and fifty five teams
(15:57):
in competition. Um, later that was a narrowed to four. Yeah,
and it's now been whittled down to ten teams, so
ten teams are still competing. These teams had to make
a real commitment to be part of this competition. It's
not something that you can just enter for free. You
actually have to pay an entrance fee. Uh. And the
(16:17):
way the entrance fee worked was that the earlier you registered,
the less expensive. The fee was began at five thousand dollars.
So when I say less expensive, I'm still talking about
a healthy chunk of change. Right. Some of these teams
are little divisions of various companies. Some of them are
partnerships between companies. But if you waited, if you dragged
your feet and you waited to register, at the end
(16:38):
of the period, you were paying around twenty five thousand
dollars for your team to be part of this competition.
So pretty impressive call now and save now. Granted, keep
in mind, if you are the team that develops the
right piece of technology, it's a ten million dollar prize.
And here's the other interesting thing. I think about the
X Prizes. A lot of times the X Prize award
(17:01):
is less money than what it would have cost in
research and development to develop the the actual technology. Well,
but hopefully you're creating a piece of technology that you
that is a real investment. Yeah, it turns out that
I think a lot of teams compete not thinking oh,
we're going to make this huge amount of money at
the end of it, but rather they're competing because one
(17:22):
they really believe in the competition, they believe in the goal,
right and to they realize that if they win, it's
not so much the money that's the big the big draw,
it's the fact that you are the ex prize winner exactly.
Even just being a finalist, you might get some publicity,
like we're about to give right now. Who are some
(17:43):
of these finals? All right? So from the United States,
this is a global challenge, So we've got countries all
over the world that have teams participating. In the US
has the most teams that made it in the final
ten Uh to the tune of four teams Aison, d
m I, the final Frontier Medical Devices, Get That Star,
(18:06):
trek UH and Scana Do which start Olivia Newton John
was amazing. One of the first blog posts we ever
wrote for our website was about the Scanna Do Scout,
wasn't it. Yeah, We'll actually have some some extensive quotes
from Lauren's blog post, which is, by the way, a
fantastic read. So it was written all the way back
in two thousand thirteen, but is still absolutely relevant. So
(18:29):
you should definitely if you haven't followed the forward thinking blogs.
Go check it out. There's some great stuff on there,
some of it even I wrote. So the United Kingdom
has two teams scan Nurse and sen Sore are both
from the UK. Then you have Canada's cloud d x UH,
and you have Slovenia's Messy Simplifying Diagnostics UH. From Taiwan
(18:53):
is Dynamical Bio Markers Group and from India is Davontry.
So these are the teams that are left. These are
the final hen and they're all working on different implementations
of this. Some of them, like I said, require like
a blood sample, so that's going to make it a
more challenging approach. When it comes to that consumer use,
which are the ones that require tears. You just want
(19:16):
someone to be weeping into a device, and that tells
you whether or not you're your Well, I'd probably rather
weep into a device than bleed into it. I can
understand that, but I think I think what would be
terrible is that I if I were making such a
device and you wept into it, the only result you
would ever get as it seems you are sad, and
(19:37):
that would be well, that's not helpful at all. The
future is in your tears. Well, the interesting one to
look at right now, I think, I mean, all of
these are interesting. But like you said, Joe, we we've
actually have someone here who's looked into the Scanna do
one specifically. Yeah, And they held an Indiego go campaign
(19:59):
back for a product called This's Going to Do Scout,
which is not going to be the final product for
competition in in the tri quarter X Prize. However, it's
it's related certainly, and and it's a it's an interesting
funding project for the whole thing. The original goal for
(20:19):
the campaign was a hundred thousand dollars. Did they make it?
They raised one point six million? What high woe? Yeah,
so it was doing okay for itself. And they also
raised another ten point five million in private financing. By
the end of that ten million X Prizes looking pretty good.
(20:39):
Uh So, this, this Scout is not really intended to
to be a diagnostic tool as much as a monitoring instrument. Right,
this isn't this like you said, this isn't their tri quarter.
This is this was something that's sort of a first step,
like a good a good foundation to work toward a triquarder.
(21:01):
But it was really more about vital signs as opposed
to all this diagnostic stuff right right with it with
an emphasis on that non invasive kind of thing. Um.
You know. It's it's this little gadget like like the
size of a of a makeup compact or a hockey
puck or something like that, and you hold it between
two fingers too specific fingers um, and hold it up
(21:21):
to your forehead and it can give you all of
this vital sign stuff and it will connect automatically to
an app that will record the data, can record it
over time for you can analyze it a little bit
and can let you upload it to your your doctor
eventually if if you need to. That is still in development,
So this is all kind of hypothetical, right, Well, that's
really cool stuff. I mean the idea that you yourself
(21:43):
are completing a circuit and that's what allows this device
to actually take those readings right right this This is
where that specific part comes in because it's the thumb
and four finger of your left hand, and so you're
completing this this bio circuit. Right electrodes touching the head
and one finger function as an electric cardiogram or ECG
(22:03):
that that measures your heart rate and rhythm against the
other finger. There's a photo thesmo graph or PPG. That
is a thing. Are you making this up? That? I
feel like I've talked about it on this very show
you probably over a year ago. There's a great so many,
so many syllables. All right, So what does that do? UM?
(22:24):
It reads your blood flow through your skin, usually using
lasers or some some other kind of light based thing,
and will measure your blood's oxygen saturation. UM. There's also
an infrared thermometer touching your head that will take your temperature.
So so yeah, it's uh. It can analyze all this
(22:44):
data within like ten seconds hypothetically and send it via
bluetooth to your smartphone UM and and connect with that
app hypothetically. They'll also include like a little gidget to
connect to your map function in your phone, so that
if you do need medical attention, it can do to
you to your local doctor or hospital. Oh yeah, so
like you could say, like I'm not I'm feeling a
(23:05):
little weird, and you hold it up and then it
takes your readings and then it says, okay, well if
you need to go to the urgent care center, it
might be you know, take this route. That's kind of cool. Yeah, yeah,
although really, you know, like like we've been saying, the
real idea behind behind the scout in specifically in the
ex Prise in general is is to not you know,
direct you to a doctor, but to kind of put
(23:25):
this capacity within the hands of of consumers, right uh,
certainly for diagnostics, yeah, they said in the x Prise itself,
it says that these devices are not necessarily meant to
get to a point where you could get a prescription
based off the reading of the device, But they said
that in the future we may even have gadgets that
(23:47):
are able to do that, although you'd more likely see
that under the under the umbrella of an official medical facility,
right right, But you know, just saving time with you know,
a not having to you know, not having you have
to go to a doctor's office unnecessarily say that doctor's time,
so that they can treat patients who really need help.
(24:07):
So do you know if the name Scanna Do is
supposed to be a mashup of the movie Scanners in
the movies Zanna Do Gosh, I hope so I know
it's a reference to Zanna Do, not the movie necessarily, No,
I think it's probably the poem. But I love the idea.
I love the idea of going around on roller skates,
sing Olivia John and then your head explodes. That's what
(24:28):
I was imagining when you all were talking about this device. Yeah,
that'd be That'd be a pretty fantastic movie. Okay, someone
call Olivia Newton John. We we need this. Ye, this
is an important film, start a kickstarter. I legitimately love
Olivia Newton John, so I will brook no actual mocking
of her. Um so, no mocking. That sounds like a
great movie fantasy the same page transitions as much as
(24:49):
we all love Zanna Do and Scanners. Yes, okay, Jonathan,
I heard you met some kind of medical device heroes
at the con this weekend. I did. I actually talked
to some folks who were interested in this, some of
whom have worked on projects like this. Whether or not
they're actually part of the the X Prize, I know
one of them had been part of it. I don't
(25:10):
know if he's part of the ten teams that have
made that final cut, because while I was at Dragon Con,
that's when this announcement came out. So it's possible that
he had been part of one of the thirty some
odd teams before it got cut down to ten. But
they were talking about their reasons for getting involved in
the first place, which I think will stay true whether
they're part of the X Prize or not, because I
(25:30):
know that a lot of these um organizations are looking
at funding from various different groups, not just not just
the X Prize. And uh, he was specifically thinking about
creating a trike order like device for medical professionals to
make their jobs easier, so getting vitals would be much
more easy thing to do, and that you could continuously
(25:52):
monitor those vitals. So this would be a device that
presumably a patient would wear in some way or would
otherwise be close enough to the pay to to have
a continuous monitoring situation going on. Because he was saying,
there are a lot of issues with things like sepsis. Uh.
You know, patients who go through surgery can suffer from sepsis,
(26:12):
which is essentially blood poisoning. One of the most common
causes of that as infection that there's some sort of
infection comes up. That's why you see doctors and nurses
with face masks on. It's not so that they don't
get sick and so that they don't share their germs
with patients, right, So, uh, sepsis can be really, really
(26:34):
a dangerous situation if you if you're suffering from it,
you may you may die. It can be deadly. Especially
it's especially dangerous because it is difficult to diagnose until
there's already a problem. Absolutely, yes, it can. It can
reach its problem exactly, can reach a critical level before
you're even aware that there's something serious going on. Uh.
(26:58):
And even if you are able to you detect it,
you know, late in the game and save the patient's life.
There can be some life altering issues that result from this,
like organ dysfunction or even having to have a limb
amputated due to this. So we're talking about a really
serious issue. And the thought is that with a continuous
(27:19):
monitoring system, it can look for tiny, uh, tiny examples
of things that might indicate that there are the conditions
right for sepsis to happen, right, so that you can
monitor it much more closely and intervene earlier before it
becomes a serious issue. So if you pair this with
(27:41):
a really uh, particularly complex algorithm, something that is really
good at detecting these minute changes and raising an alert
before it becomes a serious concern. The hope is that
you save patient lives and improve quality of life post surgery.
So that seem is like a really awesome goal to me.
(28:02):
I mean, the idea of let's let's cut this down
and make sure that people are having as good a
an experience as they possibly can. I mean, surgery is
already so traumatic for so many different reasons. You want
to be able to minimize that trauma as much as
you possibly can. And on that vein, there are other
(28:23):
medical devices out there that have been proposed that aren't
TRIKE orders. They're not meant to monitor or diagnose patients,
but are rather meant to help surgeons do their work
by making fewer mistakes in the process. And what there's
one that's being developed out of the St. Michael's Hospital
(28:45):
in Toronto that's dubbed the Surgical black Box exactly. And
the idea is that it's a series of cameras that
would be set up in the surgical room, surgical theater, whatever,
microphones as well, uh and very complex computer algorithms that
would study the movements a surgeon makes in real time
(29:07):
for whatever surgical procedure it happens to be and make
sure that the surgeon is operating within the right parameters.
Uh And according to doctor Teodor Grant Sharoff, who works
at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, he did us. He
did a study where he looked at specific surgeries and
(29:27):
he looked very closely and saw that even experienced surgeons
were making up to twenty mistakes in a single surgical procedure. Now,
these mistakes might not be life altering, they might not
even be that that dangerous, They might not have any
kind of negative impact on the patient, but they were
still a mistake. And you figure, the more surgeries you
(29:48):
have to perform within a given time frame, the more
likely you are to make a mistake. Alert fatigue starts
to set in. And the idea is that this device
would this system, it's not even a device. The system
would help surgeons by alerting them before they make a mistake.
If they start to make a move that would result
in mistake, they could be alerted, they could refocus and
(30:11):
continue and thus eliminate more mistakes through a process, which
I think is pretty cool. It's also I mean, just
imagine how I I don't know how to implement that
in a way that wouldn't be incredibly distracting if you're
talking about twenty mistakes in a single procedure. Uh, then
(30:32):
if it's going to alert you twenty times in a procedure,
I mean, imagine driving a car and it's alerting you
every time you do anything that is remotely outside the norm.
So um iteration. Yeah, it would be a little that
would be a frustrating experience every time you drive on
the sidewalk I'm thinking of I actually free single time.
(30:56):
I actually know someone who had a car. I think
it was a rental are. It wasn't like their own car,
but they had a car that would chime at you
if you got to uh, like if you went above
the speed limit for an area. Now, folks, we live
in Atlanta, and if you are driving on one of
the highways in Atlanta and you're driving the speed limit,
(31:17):
you are going to cause an accident. Yeah, that was
way too slow for traffic. Most of the time, I
would be skeptical that the car accurately knows the speed
limit for any given space. Yeah. It may have even
been that it just had a setting where it would
chime if you win above, like if you win above
fifty per hour, right, and which case you'd be yeah,
(31:39):
exactly like, well, now the bombs activated, so you're just
gonna have to keep going like this forever. Um. Yeah,
it was. It was. It was maddening to ride in
that vehicle because now the person driving it seemed to
be acclimated to it, but to anyone else, they think
exactly like, if you're worrying it, then clearly it's not
(32:01):
working in the first place. But any other passenger in
that vehicle couldn't have a conversation because you just go crazy.
But anyway, I assume that maybe uh, in the case
of surgery, obviously you're talking about uh, a very delicate
line of work that has huge impact to alter the
life of the person that you're working on. So maybe
(32:21):
in that situation it would be greeted more with, you know,
a welcoming kind of of response, especially since if you
even just want to get cynical and say I'm just
gonna be totally just pragmatic. It cuts down on chances
of things like like uh, malpractice, because if you're alerted
ahead of time before it happens, then you can correct
(32:45):
and if there are any complications that happened afterward, you
may say, well, there were complications, but we have this
record here that shows that our surgeon did everything exactly right.
So you know, sometimes complications happen even if everything went
as plans planned. Yeah. I also keep in mind that
many surgeries occur over the course of hours and hours,
(33:06):
and so twenty mistakes, you know, it sounds like a lot,
perhaps if you're not thinking about the fact that I
don't know how long these surgeries took. It might have
been an eight hour periods were made. And again, when
we say mistake, it could be something really really minor
that ultimately didn't have an impact on the surgery. But
it's still something that didn't happen as planned or didn't
(33:29):
happen the way that technically it should have happened. So
that's really interesting to me too. I'm really curious to
follow this story further find out who's going to be
the winner. Um. I hope that all the different teams
are able to produce things that end up being really effective,
whether it's in the original intended implementation or it evolves
(33:49):
into something else. I think it's really exciting. This is
very interesting. I mean, I wonder how non invasive it
can get. Yeah, like, can it be something that is
literally really like the scout where you hold it to
your your temple and it's able to get a reading,
or are we going to have to have some sort
of sampling of body fluid or something. Company is also
(34:14):
creating a urine test device. Yeah. Yeah, anything that can
sample body fluids is obviously a different kind of category
than something that you're just holding up to a person
generally at them. Yeah. I mean, it's so like the
non contact waving. Do do we think that's even realistic
even in the long term. I don't know. I'm I'm
(34:35):
kind of skeptical because I don't I don't even know
how that would work if you're not even you know,
touching somebody's skin. I think that if if the sensory
technology from what I know about stuff like the ppg um,
if if laser sensoring advanced to a point that you
could really do that quick of a sweep and it
(34:57):
could accurately measure almost the way that like ultrasound works
right now, um, what's going on inside of you? Then maybe,
But that is such a science fictional concept according to
me right now that I mean, based on my albeit
limited knowledge, I can't see that happening for forty years
at least. I think. I think it requires a couple
(35:19):
of things, and both of them are are big. One
of them is, like you were saying, Lauren, the maturation
of censoring technology so that they're able to pick up
on very very subtle things very quickly and reliably. The
other is identifying what those subtle things are for the
case of every single possible disease or condition, and taking
(35:40):
into account the fact that that many things have similar symptoms,
and furthermore that there's there's also just like a lot
of noise going on. Yeah, you know, it's exactly there
could be stuff that that is outside the norm but
isn't particularly dangerous or relevant to whatever is really the cause.
I think at first it would probably be more like
like web MD, where you know, like you stand someone
(36:01):
and it's just like, well, probably you have cancer, right,
or it'll say like you either have a headache or leprosy.
Tass a coin. So I am. I'm with you, Lauren.
I'm skeptical as well, Joe, What about you? What do
you think I just said I was skeptical? Oh are
you also scold? Maybe I didn't say I thought I
implied you probably did, and I just already forgot. I
(36:24):
don't know what I'm saying is I'm skeptical about the
no the no context R. Yeah, I don't know how
that would work. Um, but I mean I'm no expert, obviously,
I guess we'll just have to wait and see. I
would love it if we are amazed and find out
that there is some sort of new way of doing
(36:44):
that that would be phenomenal. But even if that never
comes to pass, the work that these teams are doing
is really inspiring to me, so I wish them all
the best. I cannot wait to see which one of
them walks away with the prize. And UH, I really
am eager to find, doubt what what the other teams
do as well. I mean, I think, I really think
that everyone working on this is UH doing so that
(37:07):
we all stand to benefit in one way or another
from the work. So it's really exciting. If you guys
out there have any suggestions for future episodes of forward thinking,
Maybe there's some other X Prize you've always wanted to
learn more about, or maybe there's some other type of
technology or just an element of human existence and you're
thinking what's that going to be like fifty years from now,
(37:30):
hundred years from now. You should let us know. We'll
take a look at it. We'll do a podcast about it,
maybe we'll do a video about it. Drop us a
line on Twitter, on Facebook or Google Plus, or handle it.
All three is FW thinking, and we'll talk to you
again really sooner. For more on this topic in the
future of technology, visit forward thinking dot Com, brought to
(38:03):
you by Toyota. Let's Go Places
Fw:Thinking News
Hosts And Creators
Jonathan Strickland
Joe McCormick
Lauren Vogelbaum
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.