In the fictional universe of the Star Trek TV series, Starfleet doctors routinely diagnosed their patients on the spot using boxy, gray, handheld devices called tricorders. But gadgets like these could be available much sooner than the twenty-third century thanks to a newly announced 'X Prize' for mobile diagnostics, which boasts a $10 million award.

Run by the telecom giant Qualcomm and the X Prize Foundation—a California nonprofit behind several big-money competitions in genomics, space exploration and clean-energy technologies—the aptly named 'Tricorder Prize' aims to reward the inventor of a single portable device that, without human input, can diagnose an array of diseases with the same level of accuracy as a panel of physicians. Although the specific medical conditions haven't yet been selected, they will be challenging, organizers say, ranging from metabolic syndromes to infectious diseases to neurological conditions.

Live long and prosper: The X Prize's inspiration. Credit: Yasuhide Fumoto

Last month, around 40 healthcare and medical technology experts met near Qualcomm's headquarters in San Diego to begin the six-month process of fleshing out the final requirements for winning the prize. According to Don Jones, vice president of business development for Qualcomm's health and life sciences division, everyone agrees on many of the basic parameters: the device has to be portable, minimally invasive, fast and scalable. But working out the finer points of the rules is proving time consuming. “Would drawing blood negate our premise of being noninvasive? What if the process for drawing blood is painless?” Jones asks. “It's a teeter-tottering that goes back and forth.”

The winning device will probably require some new engineering. But the hardest part, argues Darrel Drinan, founder and chief executive of the San Diego–based mobile health technology company PhiloMetron, will be developing new computer algorithms to interpret biological readouts and provide accurate diagnoses for a wide range of disparate diseases. “All kinds of monitoring tools and technology are being developed at an extraordinary rate,” Drinan says. “What's not developed are the analytics for the data.”

One of the many debates at the June meeting was whether healthcare providers will love or hate the winning device—they could welcome the drop in doctors' visits from patients not needing treatment, or they might resent their expertise being superseded by artificial intelligence. Philip Low, founder and chief executive of Neurovigil, a La Jolla, California–based technology company that specializes in brain recording, however, summarily dismisses the technophobes. “If it makes health care better,” he says, “it's something that should be embraced by physicians.”

In the end, the winning design should have an impact in both developing and industrialized countries, argues Low. “The idea here is to provide better care to people with access to health care, as well as health care to those who don't have access,” he says.