Inspired by the Star Trek tricorder, engineers and physicians at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have developed a hand-held, battery-powered device called MouthLab that quickly picks up vital signs from a patient’s lips and fingertip.
Updated versions of the prototype could replace the bulky, restrictive monitors now used to display patients’ vital signs in hospitals and actually gather more data than is typically collected during a medical assessment in an ambulance, emergency room, doctor’s office, or patient’s home.
The MouthLab prototype’s measurements of heart rate, blood pressure, temperature, breathing rate, and blood oxygen from 52 volunteers compared well with vital signs measured by standard hospital monitors.
Ref: MouthLab: A Tricorder Concept Optimized for Rapid Medical Assessment. Annals of Biomedical Engineering (2015) | DOI: 10.1007/s10439-015-1247-1