For those that grew up watching Star Trek you probably remember the mobile hand held equipment Dr. McCoy used to examine and diagnose his patients. We are now moving closer to that being reality with recent advances in technology. Using a small chemical sensing device attached to a smartphone and apps being developed by Vantage Health Inc., whose parent company is Nanobeak Inc., which has partnered with Scripps Translational Science Institute (STSI), doctors will be able to efficiently screen patients.
With STSI and Vantage Health partnering they can work together to test and bring the equipment to the market. STSI will be working on the testing and detection portion including testing and detection of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC) using Gas Chromatography and Mass Spectrometry to calibrate the findings of the Vantage sensor. Some of the VOS’s that will be detected include the VOC’s commonly associated with lung cancer. One area that that STSI and Vantage will merge their resources is clinical trials. The trials will be performed at STSI with second and third locations in the Midwest and New England.
With Vantage’s advances in mobile health technology and base in nanotechnology and STSI's National Institutes of Health-sponsored consortium, they have positioned themselves to achieve anything that can be imagined for mobile health and beyond. STSI works at research to take science and technology from the lab to the patient’s bedside. The first app is potentially going to be for lung cancer screening with future healthcare apps in the preliminary planning phase with the potential of what they can achieve being limitless.
If things keep advancing as they have, before you know it Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock will be flying a star ship to strange and uncharted worlds and improving the world we live in.
Edited by
Cassandra Tucker
