X Prize selects 10 finalists to develop medical Star Trek

Contest hopes to inspire a wireless device that can detect 16 diseases These include anaemia, tuberculosis, stroke, sleep apnea and diabetes Finalists include a team backed by Nasa and the Bill Gates Foundation They will have to demonstrate prototype devices on humans next year Three winners will be announced in 2016 with a top prize of £4.3 million

By Ellie Zolfagharifard for MailOnline

Dr Spock's tricorder could soon be 'fact, not science fiction', allowing people all over the world diagnose their own illnesses.

This is according to a group of engineers who have set up a £6 million ($10 million) competition to develop a real-life version of the Star Trek gadget.

The Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize, launched last year, hopes to inspire a wireless device capable of detecting a range of diseases, including anaemia, tuberculosis and diabetes.

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Now ten finalists have been chosen from a diverse range of backgrounds including a team backed by Nasa and the Bill Gates Foundation, and others who come from university departments.

According to the rules, finalists must demonstrate their devices on humans next year and three winners will be announced in 2016, with a top prize of £4.3 million ($7 million).

To win the cash prize, the device has to monitor vital signs as well as diagnose 16 different conditions.

One of the finalists, the Silicon Valley-based group Scanadu, revealed a handheld scanner at the CES conference earlier year.

WHAT IS A STAR TREK TRICORDER?

The technology was developed by Scandu's chief executive Walter De Brouwer, 56, at Nasa's Ames Research Centre in California.

It contains a variety of different sensors, alongside a microphone on the top of the gadget, that can read five vital signs.

These include body temperature, heart rate, oximetry (blood oxygen levels), heart rate variability and pulse wave transit time (PWTT) - the time it takes for a heartbeat to reach somewhere else in a person's body. PWTT is related to blood pressure.

Its makers claim the device is 99 per cent accurate in less than 10 seconds.

This information is then stored on a smartphone app that patients can use to monitor their health, or can be shared with doctors .

The tricorder uses a micro-USB adapter that can be hooked into a USB port, and it takes less than an hour to charge the battery.

When it is being used a few times every day, the battery lasts for about a week, the firm says.

Another device by London-based, ScanNurse, uses computer-vision techniques to analyse images taken with a camera.

They hope their system will make observations of the inside of the ears or throat, say - in the same way a doctor would - and then feed it into a computer for analysis.

Other teams are using blood and urine samples to test for key markers. The tiny microfluidic devices will, they claim, work in a similar way to hospital-lab tests.

DMI, for instance, has teamed teamed up with Nasa to create a device that astronauts could use to monitor their health on long trips and in zero gravity.

Doctors and medical engineers point out that much of the technology is already proven available to use separately.

For instance, light sensors can now track blow flow and oxygen levels within the human body. Other sensors can be used to detect gases in breath that may indicate certain diseases.

A real-life tricorder may not be as far away as people think. The challenge, now, will be to bring all of these elements together into one device.

THE 10 FINALISTS FOR THE 2014 QUALCOMM TRICORDER XPRIZE