A Boston-based research incubator has won the first part of the Nokia Sensing XCHALLENGE for mobile technology that can detect, in less than an hour, the presence or absence of disease in a drop of blood or saliva.
Nanobiosym Health RADAR was named the winner from a pool of 26 competing teams from seven countries, and will receive a $525,000 grand prize. The company's Gene-RADAR sensing technology has already been used to detect E. coli and HIV/AIDS, and officials say it holds promise for a wide range of healthcare applications.
“We’re thrilled that the Nokia Sensing XCHALLENGE helped provide a platform for Nanobiosym and the other competing teams to demonstrate their exciting technologies, ” said Robert K. Weiss, vice chairman and president of XPRIZE, in a press release. “The future of digital medical technology illuminated by Nanobiosym exemplifies the goal of the Nokia Sensing XCHALLENGE – to advance innovative sensing technologies that will help transform healthcare into a 'smart', highly personalized and instantly accessible system.”
“Congratulations to Nanobiosym and all of the teams who competed in the first competition of the Nokia Sensing XCHALLENGE,” added Henry Tirri, chief technology officer and executive vice president of Nokia, who helped launch the challenge at the Wireless-Life Sciences Alliance's 2012 Convergence Summit in San Diego. “The technologies demonstrated by the teams show the potential for sensors to bring greater efficiency, reliability and affordability to the healthcare system. We are taking a significant step towards creating an ecosystem of innovative technologies that will radically change the way people understand their state of health.”
Based in Cambridge, Nanobiosym is led by Chairman and CEO Anita Goel, MD, PHD, whose goal is to commercialize the portable, chip-based Gene-RADAR platform to tackle global healthcare issues. The platform is designed to detect any disease with a genetic fingerprint from a single drop of blood or saliva without the need for laboratories, trained healthcare workers, electricity or running water.
In a recent blog on The Huffington Post, Peter H. Diamandis, chairman and CEO of XPRIZE, said diagnostic testing will see a "major disruption" in the next few years as sensors and sensing technology improve and move out of the laboratory and into the "real world."
"This is a new world of sensors: they can be body-attached, monitor our immediate personal environment, or even work as pure software apps that extrapolate data from our health records," he wrote. "Using simple, non-invasive methods to take samples of tiny amounts of blood, traces of skin tissue, breath droplets or an image of the inner eye are just some of the new methods emerging. It is exciting to consider that several of these multifunctional sensors, working in concert with powerful mobile handhelds, offer us extraordinary data collection and diagnostic tool sets that will put us in touch with our health in ways never imagined before.
The $2.25 million Nokia Sensing XCHALLENGE, which targets sensing technology to "accelerate the availability of hardware sensors and software sensing technology that individuals use to access, understand, and improve their health and well-being," is split into two parts. Registration for the second stage will close on Feb. 12, 2014.
XPRIZE has launched several so-called "Grand Challenges" that seek to promote innovation in learning, exploration, energy and environment, global development and life sciences. Aside from the Nokia Sensing XCHALLENGE, San Diego-based Qualcomm has launched a $10 million Tricorder XPRIZE that seeks to develop a mobile healthcare device similar to the tricorder used in the 'Star Trek' TV series.
