WATCH: A UBC Okanagan researcher talks about a hand-held device similar to what Dr. McCoy used on Star Trek.
Researchers at the University of British Columbia’s Okanagan campus have developed a hand-held device similar to the tricorder from Star Trek.
In the classic science fiction series, the tricorder is a small device that instantly provides a medical analysis of any living thing.
New technology developed at UBCO could give a smartphone some of the capabilities of a tricorder–such as detecting viruses and measuring blood glucose levels–by detecting potentially harmful agents in microscopic drops of fluid.
Homayoun Najjaran, an associate professor at UBC Okanagan’s School of Engineering, says the technology consists of a digital microfluidic processor that controls electrical fields to move sample droplets in and around a chip.
The so-called “lab on a chip” may be of particular use in low-resource areas that have no access to traditional labs.
There are also countless other applications.
According to Najjaran, biotech companies could use it to find pathogens in human blood. The food and beverage industry could use it to detect pathogens in food that are harmful to consumers. It could even be used by security forces to detect chemical weapons.
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