Inexpensive Hardware Could Enable Affordable Tricorder Design
By Joel Lindsey
A group of British researchers is working to make the “tricorder” — a fictional handheld device from Star Trek capable of scanning, recording, and analyzing data — a feasible and affordable reality.
The researchers’ version of the tricorder will operate as a handheld device that can be used for medical diagnostic work. The research has been enabled by partnering with an electronics manufacturer already capable of constructing inexpensive, yet highly specialized, biochemical sensors
“[The device] will be portable and valuable because of the lower cost,” researcher Themis Prodromakis said in an article published recently by Electronics Weekly. “You could use it in Africa. It will be extremely versatile — HIV or TB tests will need a couple of disposables and a few minutes.”
The key to this particular tricorder design lies in its use of standard electronic manufacturing facilities and equipment to build critical pieces of hardware. In particular, Prodromakis and his team of researchers realized that a printed circuit board (PCB) manufacturer already had everything needed to build specialized microfluidic biochemical sensors, according to Electronics Weekly.
The sensors are designed to help automate the “enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay” (ELISA), which is an incredibly effective means of detecting certain types of viruses and other protein formations. Constructed as disposable cartridges, these sensors would plug into a small, handheld diagnostic machine, allowing doctors to make accurate diagnoses in the field.
Using laser routing, the researchers think that a normal PCB manufacturing facility could produce the microscale fluidic channels necessary for ELISA.
The other components of the tricorder — including pumps, valves, reagent chambers, controls, and sensor electrode amplifiers — would be positioned in the actual handheld device, rather than the disposable senor cartridges.
“It doesn’t need to be [super-engineered]. The cleverness is in the design of the disposable cartridge,” said Prodromakis. “It just needs simple PCB electrodes and microfluidics. We already have preliminary data. We have demonstrated the concepts in research over the last few years.”
Attempts to develop an accurate and cost-effective tricorder device have become increasingly widespread. Most recently, Med Device Online published an article about the speculation generated by Google’s Project Ara, a modular smartphone currently under development that many think could become a platform for highly mobile medical devices and technological applications.
“Slot in a few scanning modules, or one which can analyze test samples, and Ara would be transformed into a portable — and affordable — diagnostics lab,” wrote tech reporter Chris Davies. “Google’s argument for Project Ara is that by divorcing highly specific functionality from the underlying generic requirements of a phone, the cost handicap implicit in creating focused devices could be overcome.”
Cost and affordability have consistently been primary concerns in any attempt to make a tricorder device. Prodromakis and his team said that they have been able to construct very cheap microchips, but that adding all the necessary fluid interfaces continues to present a challenge to keeping overall costs low.
Image Credit: University of Southampton