A team of 60 San Diego State faculty, researchers and students entered Qualcomm’s X-Prize Tricorder Competition to revolutionize health care and win $10 million. Team captain and graduate student Lambert Ninteman’s said if the team wins, all of the money will go back to SDSU.
The competition is named after the futuristic series “Star Trek” and the team must complete a wireless portable device by April 10, 2014. The prototype must be able to monitor five vital signs: blood pressure, electrocardiography, temperature, respiratory rate and pulse oximetry. Also, for the prototype phase, the device must be able to diagnose five out of 12 diseases that are on a list, including, diabetes, stroke, hepatitis A, urinary tract infections and sleep apnea.
Ninteman is a longtime “Star Trek” fan and is spearheading the competition. The day he found out about the competition, he was accepted into SDSU’s master’s degree program.
“I found an outlet for my Tricorder design and then I got into the MBA program and it clicked that I’m going to use my MBA program to build the Tricorder,” Ninteman said.
Ninteman was diagnosed with stage 3 Hodgkin’s lymphoma at the age of 12.
“I am here, and I want to do something about it,” Ninteman said.
The Tricorder device would be available for physicians, nurses and consumers to take home and use whenever they suspect they may have an ailment or need to conduct a routine checkup.
“I’m going to be able to scan myself and everybody in my family,” Ninteman said. “If we see something coming on the horizon—we’re coming at it so early—we really can start putting treatments in place.”
The particular device that the SDSU team is working on will perform physician-grade diagnoses and have four external sensors. The sensors will be a camera for visual scans, a fluidics device for lab tests, a surface device for monitoring vital signs and an acoustic device that functions as a stethoscope.
“The technology is there, it’s nothing that’s impossible to do,”
Director of SDSU’s Donald P. Shiley BioScience Center and lead physician of the X-Prize team Dr. Roberta Gottlieb said.
One of the difficulties that the team faces is the device can’t weigh more than 5 pounds.
“If we were to take the current technology today and pack it into a suitcase, it would be a lot more than 5 pounds,” Gottlieb said.
It’s a steep competition in the Tricorder world, with more than 250 registered teams worldwide. Ninteman was awarded the President’s Leadership Fund grant through the Lavin Entrepreneurship Center and was awarded $5,000, which was the cost of the registration fees.
The project requires a lot of time and money. Students, staff, faculty and community members are doing it for personal gain and not the monetary benefits.
Electrical and computer engineering junior Patrick Belon values the experience and not getting paid isn’t a concern.
“This is one step to pursuing a dream and making a difference and that’s all we really care about, this is one time in my life where I’m young and I don’t have many commitments, so I can put all my time and effort and not worry if this is going to financially support me,” Belon said.
Belon said he will be traveling to Europe this summer. He will be coding remotely and sending data back to his team in San Diego.
The team knows the competition is stiff, but Ninteman says SDSU has a huge advantage: The entrepreneurial incubator’s located directly on campus. The X-Prize team is using the Wells Fargo Financial Markets Laboratory, Shiley BioScience Center, Zahn Center for Technological Innovation and the Lavin Entrepreneurhsip Center.
After the SDSU team presents its prototype next year, only 10 teams from the 250 will advance to the final round. The device of the winning team will be user-friendly and will be able to accurately diagnose a set of diseases without professional supervision.
