Consumer testing with Final Frontier’s Tricorder entry. Source: XPRIZE
It’s come to this. More than four years after Qualcomm Foundation launched its $10 million Tricorder XPRIZE competition challenging companies to develop a 21st century version of a Star Trek medical device, the field of finalists has been whittled down to just two contenders. Final Frontier Medical Devices, based in the Philadelphia suburban town of Paoli, and Dynamical Biomarkers is based in Boston.
Now these teams are entering the realm of live testing on consumers. The criteria for the contest means each team’s device has to measure five vital signs and test for 10 core conditions, including: anemia, atrial fibrillation, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes, leukocytosis, pneumonia, otitis media, sleep apnea, and urinary tract infection. Additionally, the devices are required to detect three elective health conditions from a set including strep throat, an HIV screen, hypertension, melanoma and shingles. They have to provide a diagnosis within minutes, according to the announcement.
The winner gets $6 million, with $2 million for second place. The team that receives the highest vital sign score gets another $1 million. The competition has generated a lot of excitement and press, but it also underscores what seem at times like two tracks in digital health — our eagerness for cool interactive tools for self assessment and the practical tools we need to improve medication adherence, chronic condition management and just making sure people can see a doctor when they need to.
Don’t get me wrong. The Tricorder XPRIZE has provided a useful experiment in engineering, consumer-focused design and the enormous challenge of creating a digital, multipurpose device to gather health data accurately. But even though the Rock Health second annual consumer survey on digital health this week showed that people are more willing to use digital health tools and pay more for the privilege, it also showed there’s plenty of challenges ahead for widespread adoption.
The report noted that 46 percent of consumers are now considered active digital health adopters, which is defined as using three or more categories of digital health tools, such as telemedicine and wearables, compared with 19 percent in 2015. Consumer willingness to pay saw a dramatic threefold increase from 2015, with 39 percent of consumers strongly agreeing that they are willing to pay for health expenses out of pocket, the survey noted.
A study published in Health Affairs earlier this month evaluated 137 patient-facing health apps intended for use by patients to manage their health that were also highly rated by consumers and recommended by experts. They also focused on high-need, high-cost populations. The study found that few of them addressed the needs of the patients who could benefit the most.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Photo: (featured) Dynamical Biomarkers’ tricorder device, XPRIZE
