Breath Taking: next generation diagnostic technology

The red-shirted crew member of the USS Enterprise gurgles and collapses. Dr Leonard McCoy, the crotchety but efficient medical officer, rushes to his side, pulling his diagnostic Tricorder from its holster, and passes the warbling device over his stricken comrade. ’My God, Jim,’ he says to his friend and captain, James T Kirk. ’He’s been infected with some sort of engineered virus that’s interrupted his brainwave patterns.’

’Fascinating,’ says science officer Spock, raising an enigmatic Vulcan eyebrow.

Spock may well have been wondering how on Earth (or any other planet) an entirely non-invasive, non-contact device could possibly come up with such a specific diagnosis in barely seconds. And since the first series of Star Trek screened in the 1960s, generations of doctors have wondered the same, looking on with envy. Will we have technology like that in the 23rd century, they wondered?

In fact, they might have something rather like it in the 21st. Doctors and engineers are getting together to devise non-invasive diagnostic devices based on sensor technologies and spectroscopic techniques to provide quick diagnoses of a number of diseases and conditions, with UK researchers and companies in the lead.