XPrize has announced the 10 finalist teams competing for the $10 million Qualcomm Tricorder XPrize, a three-and-a-half year global competition sponsored by the Qualcomm Foundation for teams to develop a consumer-focused mobile device capable of diagnosing and interpreting a set of 15 medical conditions and capturing five vital health metrics.

Launched in January 2012, the competition encourages the development of a device much like the medical Tricorder of “Star Trek” fame, moving it from science fiction to science reality. In the world of Star Trek television series and movies, the Tricorder device is a hand-held scanner that is used to detect and diagnose medical problems or take scientific readings.

Founded in 1995, XPrize competitions a designed to encourage technological development that could benefit mankind.
Announced during the opening ceremony of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society International Conference, the group of finalists competing for the Qualcomm Tricorder XPrize includes a wide range of expertise and backgrounds, representing non-profits and academia to start-ups and established device manufacturers from six countries.

The 10 teams advancing to the final round are:

• Aezon (Rockville, Md.), led by Tatiana Rypinski, a team of student engineers from Johns Hopkins University partnering with the Center for Bioengineering Innovation & Design.
• CloudDX (Mississauga, Canada), a team from medical devices manufacturer Biosign and led by the company’s chief medical officer, Dr. Sonny Kohli.
• Danvantri (Chennai, India), a team from technology manufacturer American Megatrends India and led by company director and CEO Sridharan Mani.
• DMI (Cambridge, Mass.), a team led by Dr. Eugene Y. Chan of the DNA Medicine Institute partnering with NASA, the National Institutes of Health and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
• Dynamical Biomarkers Group (Zhongli City, Taiwan), a team of physicians, scientists and engineers led by Harvard Medical School professor Chung-Kang Peng.
• Final Frontier Medical Devices (Paoli, Pa.), a team led by the founders of Basil Leaf Technologies—brothers Dr. Basil Harris, an emergency room physician, and George Harris, a network engineer.
• MESI Simplifying diagnostics (Ljubljana, Slovenia), a team from diagnostic medical device manufacturer MESI and led by company CEO Jakob Susteric.
• SCANADU (Moffett Field, Calif.), a team from Silicon Valley-based start-up SCANADU, led by technology entrepreneur and company co-founder and CEO Walter De Brouwer.
• SCANurse (London, England), a team from diagnostic medical manufacturer SCANurse and led by biomedical engineer and company founder, Anil Vaidya.
• Zensor (Belfast, Ireland), a team from clinical sensor and electrode company Intelesens and led by Chief Technology Officer Jim McLaughlin.

More information on each team can be found here.

“Our selected finalists represent the most promising and innovative submissions as determined by our expert judging panel,” said Grant Campany, senior director, Qualcomm Tricorder XPrize. “We want consumers to take a more proactive approach to managing their health and having convenient access to real-time medical data will do just that. As we move to the final stage of this process, we are one step closer to putting healthcare in the palm of your hand.”

During the qualifying round, each team was required to submit an entry that addressed safety, user experience and a health assessment evaluation. The judging panel, comprising various digital health and medical industry experts, reviewed 21 team submissions from nine countries and selected the 10 most credible entries.

“The technologies being created for the Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE can have an exponential, global impact, not only on remotely diagnosing diseases, but on a myriad of other medical areas, including continuous health monitoring, disease prevention and chronic disease management,” said Rick Valencia, senior vice president and general manager of Qualcomm Life. “It will certainly be exciting to see these devices materialize as we move closer to the competition’s end.”

As part of the final round, teams will compete in both diagnostic experience evaluations and consumer testing, slated for mid- to late-2015. The final judging and awards ceremony will take place in early 2016.

Throughout the competition, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is offering regulatory input to the competing teams to help them prepare for potential FDA review post-competition.

Established in 2010 by Qualcomm Inc., the Qualcomm Foundation is dedicated to developing and strengthening communities worldwide. Specifically, the Qualcomm Foundation focuses its philanthropic efforts on helping create and sustain educated, healthy, culturally vibrant communities in regions around the globe.