Medical science advanced incredibly in the 20th century. Now Nokia and the X-Prize Foundation are pushing to make sure these great strides continue in the 21st century. Earlier this month, at the Wireless Health Convergence Summit in San Diego, Nokia and X-Prize Foundation executives announced that they will be holding a 2.25 million dollar competition to develop innovative medical sensing technology and devices.
The competition is fostering the technology that will deliver a dramatically better quality, accuracy and ease of constant monitoring of a person's health. Of course, this data must be obtained in real time and communicated wirelessly so patients and doctors can access it when needed.
The partnership involves Nokia because eventually these types of technologies could be put into handheld devices like cell phones. This would expand the market for these medical monitoring devices into areas of general public health and fitness. They stress this would help health care providers and consumers simultaneously.
Executives pointed out that improving on effectiveness, convenience and reducing the price of sensor devices could result in a reduction and better use of the 2 trillion dollar cost of the U.S. healthcare system.
Three competitions will be had in the next three years. Nokia and X-Prize hope that each winner will contribute to another competition called the Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize: a competition to develop the ultimate simple to use medical multi-sensor and processing device that could redefine the healthcare industry.
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