'Tricorders' galore: X Prize update at CES

Qualcomm staged a second announcement at CES on Tuesday of the Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize for the development of mobile diagnostic devices much like those depicted on Star Trek. While our readers knew about this when first announced in spring last year [TA 16 May 11]the awards funded by the Qualcomm Foundation are stunning: the top team will win $7 million, second prize is $2 million, third prize $1 million. It seems like the ‘tricorder’ idea is hot, with other devices claiming Bones-like status: according to the following article, last month the Canadian government and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded a $38.5 million initiative; the (unnamed in article) Infrascanner (see article following) is considered to be in the category, and a startup called Scanadu is working on a mobile device which parents can use to monitor their kids’ health. MSNBC.com catches and mashes it up for you