How the XPrize Foundation Is Building Our Next-Gen Health Sensors

Dr. Beverly Crusher uses a tricorder to scan Chief Engineer Geordi La Forge aboard the USS Enterprise, from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Paramount

Apple and Google aren’t the only ones pushing for a new generation of wearables and gadgets that can monitor your health from minute to minute.

As the two tech giants invite a world of developers to create health apps and devices that dovetail with Apple iOS and Android gear, the XPrize Foundation—that not-for-profit champion of incentivized innovation—is running the Nokia Sensing XChallenge, using cash prizes to spark the development of new sensor technologies that address healthcare problems and help people generally monitor their well-being. This week, the organization selected eleven projects to vie for the grand prize, including a smartphone-based tool that aims to provide early diagnosis for diabetic retinopathy, a leading cause of blindness in adults; a sensor that can help monitor patients with chronic heart failure; and a sensor that detects sleep apnea.

The winners are set to be determined this November at the Exponential Medicine conference in San Diego, California. The grand prize is $525,000, and five runners up will receive $120,000. It’s part of a much larger movement that seeks to redefine healthcare through sensing technology. Some of these efforts are rather questionable, but XPrize is among those hoping to bring some legitimacy to the movement—and ultimately win FDA approval for these new types of devices.

Round Number Two

This is the contest’s second go round. The Nokia Sensing XChallenge was first announced in 2012, with the idea that it would be held twice over the next two years, and that it would feed into a bigger, $10 million challenge: the Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE. True to its name, this prize aims to a create a universal, Star Trek-inspired medical diagnostic tool that detects up to 16 separate health conditions.

EyeMITRA is a phone-based tool that provides early diagnosis for diabetic retinopathy, a leading cause of blindness in adults. XPRIZE

The original Sensing XChallenge, says Grant Campany, senior director of the competition, was set up as a starting point for the identification and collection of promising technologies for the Tricorder XPRIZE. But after the competition got underway, most teams decided that they wanted to refine their technologies instead of pivoting them for the future Tricorder challenge, and for Campany, that ended up creating stronger individual technologies.

“The Nokia Sensing XChallenge provides an objective means by which these technologies can be evaluated, and is also an opportunity to increase awareness of these technologies around the world,” Campany says. “It engages the general public on what’s just around the corner.”

This year, only one of the teams—Cambridge, Massachusetts-based DMI, which designed a sensor that assesses hundreds of clinical lab tests using a single drop of blood—is also a Tricorder finalist. Campany says that the finalists of the competition have a mix of motivations. Some teams formed because members had an idea for a product that was ripe for commercialization, and others were university academics and students who simply wanted to delve deeper into sensor technology research.

Ahead of the Curve

How close are the projects to widespread distribution? That varies on a case-by-case basis, according to Campany. One of the biggest challenges teams face is how to distill the vast body of data collected by sensors into usable information. Another is navigating regulatory questions, many of which have never been asked before, since the inventions are brand new. “It’s complicated to be involved in research that’s so far ahead of the curve that regulatory boards don’t even have the guidelines yet,” Campany says.

One way the organization is dealing with the problem is by forming a relationship with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the federal agency that pronounces whether a new diagnostic tool can be cleared for public use. For the Tricorder XPRIZE, the foundation arranged for teams to have direct access to a help desk comprised of 18 FDA volunteers. And so the collaboration forced the FDA to face these new questions, which could accelerate the approval of similar technologies they encounter in the future.

All the while, the competition acts as a breeding ground for cutting edge ideas in sensing technology. Last year, according to competition organizers, the big trend that emerged was lab-on-a-chip. This year, teams made great strides in using photonics sensors to gather information on environmental contaminants and blood chemistry.

But what has been most rewarding as someone working in this space, Campany says, is the opportunity to put the finalists’ research up on a big stage—and getting them some much-needed funding. “What’s been really fun for us is seeing prize winners walking out of the room and meeting investors in the same venue,” he says. “That kind of attention bringing money to these teams that would otherwise be having a much greater struggle is really gratifying.”