Scanadu is making fast progress in building one of the most mythical pieces of tech known to geekery. As an entrant in the Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE, the health-tracking device is designed to read your temperature, blood pressure, respiration, and other vital signs, just by holding it to your temple. Last week, the Scanadu Scout finally launched on Indiegogo, and already has raised nearly $700,000--seven times its stated goal, with two weeks left to go.
The XPRIZE originally used the omni-informative tool as inspiration for a $10 million prize founded to make health analysis available to consumers at home. "Somebody will have to build the Tricorder one day," says Walter De Brouwer, Scanadu's co-founder.
His team originally bought a bunch of old Star Trek props for study, when they embarked on the project. But the Scout is notably updated from the Tricorder, too. The size, for example, is more appropriate to hold in a single hand -- though still big enough that a child can't swallow it. "It didn’t need to be so big. Some of the functions were already taken over by one chip," says De Brouwer. "Some of the color schemes were also a bit what you would expect, in the 60s and the 70s, to be the future. Well now we are living in that future, our color schemes are of course different.”
And one more big difference is, while the Tricorder was used by doctors and other professionals (Beverly Crusher, Spock), you can get this one and see the data for yourself, on your smartphones. And on your smartphones, you can analyze your data over time
It’s part of a rapidly growing cohort of devices that track personal information and make it actionable. From the simplest pedometers to FDA-approved medical devices, designers are building tools meant to be kept on or around the body. (Yves Behar, who designed the Jawbone UP, was also behind Scanadu.) But those trackers, worn on the body, don't offer the opportunity to help other people, one of the Scout's primary functions. "They do not bring out the empathy in us to help others," says De Brouwer.
"I was more and more under the impression that, when you end up in an ICU, you become a sort of river of data," says De Brouwer. "You are the sum of your data." But, he adds, you need a tool to help you understand that data. And the era of the smartphones brought with it new opportunities to build those tools.
Another one of those tools is ScanaFlo, an at-home urine-testing device Scanadu will be releasing after the Scout. ScanaFlo can offer still more physiological information, from glucose and protein levels to pregnancy, but brings with it some unique design challenges -- and opportunities -- thanks to the intimate way users have to interact with it. "Basically, these things are hard to make glamorous," says De Brouwer. "These are bodily fluids we are not, you know, very proud of." But the device also offers an opportunity for privacy, allowing users to take metrics at home.
"You become like this big sheet of numbers," says De Brouwer. "And once you understand these numbers, I think it has something hopeful, because if you know that you are data and you know what this data is, if you understand that you can change your future.”
You can pre-order the Scout here for $149.
Images: Courtesy of Scanadu
