Scanadu Scout has become the most successful project on Iniegogo crowdfunding platform. The Scanadu Scout is a gadget from the world of Star Trek. Heard of the Tricorder? It’s a handheld scanner that scans, analyses and records data. There are different types of tricorders, and the medical tricorder is one of them. The Scanadu Scout is that medical tricorder brought to real life, or at least in March 2014 when the project delivers.
What exactly does the Scanadu Scout do? Hold it to your temple area, and the gadget tells you a few vital statistics about your well being. Let’s start with your temperature. Not too impressive, right, because there are already infrared temperature scanners around nowadays. But wait, this is only the beginning.
The Scanadu Scout also tells you your heart rate. It can also tell you your respiratory rate. Is this starting to sound interesting? It’s not out-of-this-world yet. But hey, there’s more!
How about knowing your oximetry level? This tells you how much oxygen you have in your blood. Yeah yeah, this is like those gadgets that clip on to your finger you’ve seen in hospitals. Except this one doesn’t need to be clipped to your finger.
Then, how about your blood pressure and ECG? Yes, without arm cuffs, this gadget tells you your blood pressure. Without a bunch of pads stuck onto your chest, this gadget can measure your ECG.
Finally, it also measures your emotional stress level. I honestly don’t understand what exactly this measures, though, but it nevertheless sounds interesting.
It’s a gadget of the future.
The Indiegogo funding for Scanadu Scout just concluded, and they have some US$1,665,579 in the bank. It’s a record for the Indiegogo crowdfunding platform. It’s not anywhere near the record held by the other popular crowdfunding platform, KickStarter, achieved with the Pebble project. But I’m sure both Indiegogo and Scanadu Scout are proud of their achievement.
The Scanadu Scout addresses a a very useful need, that of collecting a bunch of person’s vital signs easily and quickly, and have it recorded automatically. You hold the gadget to your temple, wait about 10 seconds or so, and you get a bunch of readings that include your temperature, heart rate, respiratory rate, blood oximetry level, blood pressure, ECG, and emotional stress.
Because it is so easy to take measurements, you can do that several times a day. The Scanadu Scout records the readings. If you’re sick and you need to visit your doctor, you can share these historical recordings with him. It is so much better than the doctor having just that one set of vital signs taken at that point in time when you were in his clinic.
It sounds like the Scanadu Scout will revolutionarize how we measure and take stock of our health.
Now, it’s a long wait till March 2014 for contributors to get their gadget.
View Comment Policy