Scanadu: assessing your vital signs in 10 seconds

The device in the picture is the Scanadu, which provides instant information on six vital signs: body temperature; breathing rate; oxygen in the blood; heart beat; blood pressure; and stress level, in just 10 seconds, which it then sends to your smartphone. During its trial phase it broke all fundraising records on crowdfunding site Indiegogo, garnering the 100,000 dollars originally sought in less than two hours, and now close to raising 1.5 million dollars.

Subsequently dubbed the tricorder in honor of the device featured in Star Trek, the Scanadu allows you to “check your health as easily as you check your email.” Simply by holding it to your temple for 10 seconds it measures your vital signs and sends them via an app to your smartphone with all the diagnostic potential that implies. The company wants to become a leader in the “consumerization” of health management, although the device, which has now been submitted for the ten-million dollar X Prize, was originally conceived by NASA as a simple way for astronauts to check their physical condition during prolonged stays aboard the International Space Station.

Contributing to the crowdsourcing campaign allows donors to buy a Scanadu for 149 dollars, compared to the retail price of 199 dollars. The company has also come up with a kit called Scanaflo, which allows users to test their urine simply and quickly at home.

The potential is clear: we tend not to check on our vital signs until something goes wrong, typically when we are being admitted to hospital or visiting the doctor. All interaction with a patient at the moment of admission to hospital is about assessing his or her vital signs. The advantages of a more regular evaluation of vital signs is obvious, and the appealing idea of taking charge over one’s own health explains the massive support on Indiegogo, and is closely tied to the phenomenon of the quantified self.

The Scanadu is on track for approval by the US Food and Drug Administration, and looks set to make a major contribution to the development of an industry dedicated not simply to data gathering, but to the management of telemedicine, as well as many other related health matters.