Medical Futures Lab

Have you heard of the medical Tricorder? It’s the fictional device used in the Star Trek universe to instantly diagnose disease without any invasive procedures. This space gadget seems like it could be pretty useful, but it isn’t real. Or is it?

In 2011, a non-profit organization focusing on technological development, X Prize, and the wireless telecommunication company, Qualcomm, organized the Qualcomm Tricorder Competition, inviting scientists world wide to turn the fictional medical Tricorder device into the next real health-tech breakthrough. The winner is to develop a hand held device that will diagnose patients better than or equal to a panel of board certified physicians.

The ultimate goal of this competition is to develop a device that will provide instantaneous medical feedback for an individual’s health status without any invasive procedures or trip to healthcare facilities. This, in theory, would give individuals direct access to health data as well as full control over how, when, and where they receive care.

This science fiction idea seems radical in that it is trying to condense the entire primary care physician’s job into one handheld device. With the development of devices such as the lab-on-a-chip, maybe the technology does exist that this device may not completely be out of reach. However, is it right to outsource such a huge task to a little phone screen? Even if such computerized devices give rise to better diagnostic outcomes than the 55% (as reported by the Qualcomm competition website) met by human physicians, is it right to shrink medicine down to statistics and algorithms?

Of course, even if this device is to be made, more invasive procedures will probably continue to be done in hospital – but that being said, I would like to believe that there is more to medicine than just providing a diagnosis. The new technology (again, in theory) will be able to gather health metrics to raise concerns for a specific diagnosis, but full patient context should be understood before making health decisions.

The medical tricorder may be perfected to be used as a supplementary medical device for those willing to purchase such a device – but this should never replace a doctor’s visit. The organizers for this competition provide the rationale that people more often than not must seek a healthcare professional in order to receive any type of direct medical care, creating an inefficient healthcare system that is out of reach for those who actually need it.

Although the concern brought up by the Qualcomm and X Prize is certainly valid, creating technology to replace doctors to an extent seems to be a bit extreme. Many studies have definitely shown evidence that increased physician-patient interaction correlate with better outcomes. Just from personal experience in research, I have seen the large positive placebo effect on patients just from being able to talk to a professional.

Patients who are going to the doctor out of concern for personal well-being are going to go to the doctor regardless of what a machine tells them. Those that are going to be persuaded not to go are those that probably wouldn’t have gone unless the symptoms were truly bothersome anyway – so in a sense – we aren’t really getting anywhere with this.

Sometimes, what the patient needs is genuine attention from the HCP, not an analysis of story-less numbers and figures. Technology can always be a great supplement, fulfilling biological human needs, but not enough to fulfill personal human needs.