Mobile unit for on-field interventions
The medical tricorder Meditech is a modular specialized version of the standard Starfleet tricorder (it will not be in service on the starships before the 23rh Century).
It is equipped with sensors and analysis software tailored for medical diagnostic purposes. These sensors will collect, store and organise data to be used, especially in emergency and crytical situations on the Earth and other exoplanets, when assessing a patient's condition.
The future centuries medical tricorders will be more compact and equipped than the Meditech unit that is under development in 2015, the actual century. Meditech tricorder will be a full working one with some limitations in size and features conditioned by our actual technology. The Meditech device is a portable unit of about 25cm per side controlled by a separate handheld to display data and organise patient information. These information can be sent to a remote central unit for helping the intervention of the remote operator. At the actual date our technology has not yet made available very-long-distance instant communications so in the today scenario we assume that it will be impossible to use this model sending data to any orbiting starship, if any.
Instead this device is able to use the Earth internet network to connect the on-field operating unit with a remote specialised site, e.g. hospital, ambulatory, medical center and so on.
One of the features of Meditech, the model is much smaller than the heavy-duty versions available on the first starship vessels, is the availability of a slide-up camera probe for fast high resolution images an videos for any purpose. The same probe includes a frame comparing software to check detail changes during short times, e.g. catching the eye reaction to a flash light.
A series of standard medical probes, some coming from the past century but with improved functionality can track most of the most important vital signals of the patient (hearth rate, hearth frequency, body temperature, eye reactivity, glucose sensor, non-invasive probes like echography, ECG and others) The signals coming from the probes are collected and organised, then sent to a local display unit to facilitate a first diagnosis if the operator is enabled to do it.
Alternatively the visualised data can be sent wirelessly via 3G / 4G or other remote networking technologies to a specialised unit able to give assistance to the medical operator acting on-site.
Most of the signals can also be monitored continuously.
The display unit consists of a 6-9 inches handheld acting also as mobile access point to the Internet. Meditech is equipped with a small printing unit managed by both the main device and the display device depending on what task should be done.
The display unit graphic interface is designed to create the better user experience:
As there are many different situation where the Meditech can be applied as helpful diagnosis device the main unit is completely modular: The system can host add-on probes to manage specific diagnostic information and it is designed to be able to host at least three more extra-probes (alternatively) that will be designed and created in the future.
The Meditech mobile unit can be used everywhere including in closed areas and any Earth sanitary structure.
The remote assistance unit
Meditech
unit can be paired with a remote unit installed in a medical center or available to specialised medical personnel that can support the remote operator in the patient diagnosis.
As a matter of fact the remote assistance unit is a twin Meditech device that - depending by the conditions - can optionally host the probes too. The unit includes a HDMY 15 inche (or more) flat screen, keyboard, mouse and audio features.
The remote assistance unit exclude instead the display unit handheld (replaced by the HID devices, i.e. keyboard, mouse and monitor).
So the Meditech is convertible depending on the usage and it is not needed any kind of special installation, change, upgrade etc.
This feature grant the better flexibility of the system that can work almost on any, known or unknown environment. A further evolution of the actual design is to setup a unit protected against damaging environmental factors e.g. humidity, direct sun exposition, unavailability of a stable AC recharging power supply and more.
Note1: Images are mostly from the Star Trek wikipedia Memory Alpha. The shown images are not decorative only as are also the source of inspiration of the User Interface design for the device.
Note2: Meditech device, codename tricorder will be available as the first prototype for the end of August, 2015. It's a pleasure to see a future idea transformed in reality just now.