{"id":6861,"date":"2025-07-11T13:05:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-11T13:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/?p=6861"},"modified":"2025-07-11T13:05:00","modified_gmt":"2025-07-11T13:05:00","slug":"towards-a-tricoder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/?p=6861","title":{"rendered":"Towards a Tricoder"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n<\/div>\n

By MIKE MAGEE<\/p>\n

On March 9, 1967, the Star Trek classic episode, \u201cThe Devil in the Dark\u201d<\/a> first aired. The Enterprise<\/em> had received an urgent distress call from miners on the planet Janus VI. <\/em>They are literally melting after, Horta, a wounded inhabitant has targeted them with liquifying acid rays.<\/p>\n

A sympathetic Spock hears the call, and in an effort to disclose cause and motivation, \u201cmind-melts\u201d with the creature. Turns out, all she\u2019s trying to do is protect her babies from a perceived threat. Kirk agrees, and with Spock, calls in Dr. McCoy to access the patient\u2019s condition.<\/p>\n

What McCoy encounters is a \u201crocky-skinned patient.\u201d With the aid of his tricoder, <\/em>a handheld diagnostic sensor, \u201cBones\u201d<\/a> (McCoy\u2019s nickname referencing the historical 19th century American slang \u201cSawbones\u201d <\/em>referring to surgeons) <\/em>uncovers a serious and deep gaping wound that requires immediate attention.<\/p>\n

Kirk manages to \u201cbeam down\u201d a hundred pounds of thermoconcrete<\/em>, and McCoy expertly applies it to the wound. All of which is a set-up for his shipmates to wonder if this will work, which generates the iconic most-repeated line in the series storied history. McCoy (clearly irritated) utters \u2013 \u201cHow do I know? I\u2019m a doctor, not a bricklayer.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Similarly challenged modern day doctors have been voicing their own frustrations for more than a few decades. But the AMA <\/a>has been scientifically tracking their discontent only since 2011. The levels of burnout are somewhat down in 2025 compared to peaked pique in 2021. But among the irritants, integration of new technology remain near the top of the list.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

Nobody knew better than McCoy the mixed blessing of technology. His original \u201c23rd century tricoder<\/em>\u201d was a marvel of diagnostic science but also raised ethical dilemmas and patient expectations. The fictional tool originally was the size of a portable tape recorder and served as a general data sensor and analyzer. The medical version was a \u201chand-held high resolution scanner\u201d which (in the 24th century version) had a flip out panel with expanded screen, said to have been inspired by the HP-41C<\/a> scientific calculator.\u201d<\/p>\n

On May 10, 2011, Qualcomm partnered with entrepreneurs to create the Ticorder X Prize,<\/a> a $10 million incentive for anyone who could actualize the Star Trek fictional model\u2019s capabilities in a hand-held medical tricoder. Five years later, the contest was officially closed out, with $3.7 million awarded <\/a>to multiple contestants, none of whom successfully reproduced all the capabilities.<\/p>\n

This is not to say that dreamers in the Star Trek mode ever gave up on being successors to McCoy. In 2013, 15-year-old Aspen Palatnick <\/a>took a summer internship at Long Island\u2019s historic Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory to learn the basics of genome analysis. Seven years later, after teaming up with his original professor, Michael Schatz,<\/a> they developed \u201cthe world\u2019s first mobile genome sequence analyzer\u201d as an iPhone app termed iGenomics.<\/a><\/p>\n

Cold Spring Harbor<\/a> trumpeted their success on December 7, 2020, stating \u201cThe iPhone app was developed to complement the tiny DNA sequencing devices being made by Oxford Nanopore<\/a>. Palatnick,<\/a> now a software engineer at Facebook, was already experienced at building iPhone apps when joining the Schatz laboratory. He and Schatz realized that as the sequencers continued to get even smaller, there were no technologies available to let you study that DNA on a mobile device. \u201cMost of the studying of DNA: aligning, analyzing, is done on large server clusters or high-end laptops\u2026flying in suitcases full of Nanopores and laptops and other servers to do that analysis in the remote fields (was impractical). iGenomics helps by making genome studies more portable, accessible, and affordable.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPortable, accessible, and affordable!\u201d That\u2019s something Bones McCoy could get behind. In fact, he\u2019d be amazed to see what he has spawned in 2025, and how new technology is augmenting rather than complicating the work of physicians, nurses and medical scientists.<\/p>\n

Consider, for example the publication that dropped on June 3, 2025 in Nature<\/a>. In the reporting in Science magazine, you could feel the excitement: \u201cDuring a single week in April 2023, the area around Florida\u2019s Washington Oaks Gardens State Park was abuzz. A bobcat passed by, perhaps stalking the eastern gray squirrels. An eastern diamondback rattlesnake slithered through the undergrowth. The spaces among the grand oaks hummed with wildlife\u2014a big brown bat, mosquitoes, and an osprey\u2014and people with African, European, and Asian ancestors\u2026 Scientists didn\u2019t directly see any of these creatures. But they used cutting-edge DNA technology to find evidence of them in tiny specks of organic material floating in the air. A similar analysis of air from the streets of Dublin revealed a far different, but equally rich, tableau of life.\u201d<\/p>\n

The new technique, \u201cshotgun sequencing\u201d<\/a> can read, analyze, and reconstruct large DNA sequences from billions of short sequences. But what\u2019s really startling is the usability of the device in the field. As reported,<\/a> \u201cAt least one newer machine is smaller than a cigarette packet and can plug into a laptop, compared with previous machines the size of a small household refrigerator.\u201d<\/p>\n

David Duffy,<\/a> a biologist at the University of Florida\u2019s Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience and senior author of the new study, originally wanted to title the article, \u201cTowards a tricorder,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0 but was dissuaded stating, \u201cWe\u2019re not claiming to be there,\u201d Duffy says. \u201cWe\u2019re saying we are a lot closer to this being a factual reality than we were a few years ago. And you can foresee it being a reality in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mike Magee MD is a Medical Historian and regular contributor to THCB. He is the author of CODE BLUE: Inside America\u2019s Medical Industrial Complex. (Grove\/2020)<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By MIKE MAGEE On March 9, 1967, the Star Trek classic episode, \u201cThe Devil in the Dark\u201d first aired. The Enterprise had received an urgent distress call from miners on the planet Janus VI. They are literally melting after, Horta, a wounded inhabitant has targeted them with liquifying acid rays. A sympathetic Spock hears the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":6856,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6861"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6861\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}