This NASA-Tech Health Scanner Might Be The Closest Thing To A Real-Life Tricorder Yet

V-Sense Medical’s device can measure your vital signs—from a distance

When Jeff Nosanov’s baby was born and ended up in intensive care, something scary happened: the tiny vital sign monitors attached to his son kept falling off, over and over. Each time, all of the baby’s stats—like whether he was safely breathing—disappeared.

Two years later, his new baby daughter also spent time in the hospital, and the same thing happened. It’s a common problem with squirmy infants. But this time Nosanov, who was working at NASA, realized that he might be able to do something to help.

At NASA, Nosanov was working with new technology designed to find people in a disaster by using radar to measure breathing and heart rate from a distance. He realized that a similar device could be used in hospitals, or at home, to track health in babies or adults, and send instant alerts if there was a problem.

“You can imagine how a person presented with this problem with medical technology, and this potential solution, would just get completely obsessed with it,” he says. “So that’s been me for the last three years.”

By beaming radar into a room—something that is as harmless as shining a flashlight—it’s possible to spot tiny movements like the rise and fall of a chest as someone breathes. When the device detects a pattern that seems like a person, the software can convert the data into heart rate and respiratory rate. It’s essentially a real-life version of a Star Trek tricorder—and closer to the fictional version than most other startups because it works from a distance.

Nosanov’s new company, V-Sense Medical, is miniaturizing the NASA tech and creating a series of devices that can be used to monitor health, beginning with a version for nursing homes. Soon, they plan to have a version that can sit in a bedroom, and continuously monitor data at home.

Read more: This NASA-Tech Health Scanner Might Be The Closest Thing To A Real-Life Tricorder Yet

See Also

Hybrid technology could make Star Trek-style tricorder a reality