Ernesto Ramirez

May 22, 2013

Scanadu, a valued annual sponsor of the Quantified Self, has some important news to share. Check out the announcement below about their recently launched Indiegogo campaign.

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Sapere Aude.  Dare to know
Whether you’re a Quantified Selfer, life-logger, Maker, medical student, techie, MD, parent with kids, parent with parents, teacher, educator, baby boomer, data scientist, pilot, mountaineer, athlete or mathlete, Scanadu Scout™ will medically empower you. Who’s the “first responder” when your vital signs are in flux? You!

Yes! We are the last generation to know so little about our health.

What is the Scanadu Scout™?
Scanadu Scout™ is designed to be a medical grade Tricorder using your smartphone and Bluetooth LE that emulates an Emergency Room in your pocket. It can read your heart rate, skin temperature, core body temp, SPO2, respiratory rate, blood pressure, ECG, and emotional stress. Simply place the scout on your forehead for 10 seconds and snap, your stats are displayed on your smartphone.

With strong feedback from the community, partners, and regulators, and a strong push from Scanadu’s engineers and researchers, the company has made three key breakthroughs:

• Scout others as well as yourself: Just like Mr. Spock, you can now Scout someone else – an ailing parent or sick child. With this breakthrough, Scanadu made some key changes to the design. It is now circular in shape, with the sensors built into the front of the device.
• Make your health feed accessible from a one-stop-shop: You’ll be able to collect readings from Scanadu’s suite of products – including Project ScanaFlo – through one integrated app. Seeing your comprehensive health feed allows for data fusion, and the potential to read more vitals such as cuff less, non-invasive blood pressure. Scanadu Scout supporters will receive free paddles.
• Increased the computational power of the device: Scanadu has added more horsepower to the device, taking it from 8 bytes (the power of an Apple II) to 32 bytes (the power of a smartphone). The new device is built on Micrium, NASA’s real-time operation system for SAM (Sample Analysis at Mars) on the Rover Curiosity.

Where are We in Development?
We have a prototype device that is designed to be an exploratory tool, to interface with medical accessories to measure vitals signs and reagents.

Scanadu Scout™ is not yet FDA approved, and hence it is not a medical device and makes no medical claims. However, to bring the Scanadu Scout™ to the vast consumer market, we still have to file with the FDA. Right now we are giving access to our first version as an exploratory tool, where you and your community are the researchers! By helping us collect future data, we can file our application to the FDA for market approval for an over-the-counter consumer-grade diagnostic tool. As a research tool, the product will not pose any risk to users and can be used to collect, store and display all your information, but without making specific disease diagnoses.

Scanadu will also be offering an early bird special of $149 for the device to the first 1,000 participants. Additional units will be made available at the anticipated retail price of $199. And of course very cool perks for Bodyhackers, Quantified Selfers, Makers, Bio Trekkies and Citizen Doctors! We manufacture in the USA, shipping is worldwide and planned for Q1 2014, and if we ‘re early, it will be a nice surprise:-)