Swiping Out Cancer

mhackarbie writes "Just read this article over on Wired about a cheap hand scanner which might be able to spot cancer tumors. It took only few seconds of reflection before I decided this could be the killer biotech app which is needed for the dot-bio boom everyone keeps predicting someday." We've mentioned this gizmo before.

Comments

I'm sure it will do wonders for..

[3.5 stripes]

Insurance companies as well.

Go to your job interview, pee in this cup, swipe this in your mouth.

In one simple step eliminate drug users, and possible insurance deadweights... Joy!

Discovery Channel

[Anonymous Coward]

Discovery Channel had a show not too long ago about trained dogs being able to -smell- cancer on test subjects.
Not only would it not require development or be at the hands of some biotech CEO, but dogs have been shown to lower blood pressure in people.

Think of it: Handheld Schnauzer.

You could probably train basset hounds too, just so that PVP would have more material.

Re:Discovery Channel

[SkewlD00d]

Yeah, I remember that... it was very impressive. I believe that a dog has superior computational power and discrimination abilities that could easily be more accurate and reliable than some piece of technology. How much/hard would it cost to train a dog to do this? Imagine... if we have specialized dogs for certain functions... eventually will have purpose-bred species of animals/plants for very specific tasks (*cough* babel-fish :). Also, I remember something about a UV camera system for dermatologists. Btw, have you ever looked at your skin in a mirror w/ a black-light (CCUV flourescent), you can see differences in tissues in you skin not visible in white light.

How about cancer-sniffing dogs?

[blakespot]

It seems you don't need electronics to detect cancer, just man's best friend. Interesting stuff.

blakespot

Sad

[pubjames]

Sorry, people are rather interested in themselves, not in charity.

Speak for yourself.

In the USA over the last few decades a rather sad mindset has developed amongst certain people. That is that selfishness is normal, natural even. People use this to justify their selfish behavour, or that of the organisations they work for. It is very sad.

Cancer can act as a metaphor for this type of thinking. Our human bodies are made up of millions of individual cells co-operating and working together. A cancer occurs when a cell becomes defective and no longer lives in harmony with the others.

But what we really need...

[Snafoo]

Is something like this for STD's. Oh come on, admit it --- condoms suck, and not in that fun way. Wouldn't you rather just tricoder her nether-regions?

Re:Article smells of hype

[CompCons]

Check out this company....they have a way of detecting breast cancer that no one is using...works better than Mammogramms or Sonograms and it's cheaper than all of them. I think it's time we started paying attention to the new technology instead of just assuming that the old stuff works fine. Alot of people are dying of cancer and the numbers are only rising.

Re:Good, but not the killer app

[mhackarbie]

There are several reasons why I believe that it has potential as a killer application in biotech. Because it is an external hardware device, it bypasses a lot of testing and regulatory issues that are such a problem for drug development. Also, to improve the diagnostic problem, I think devices like this will ultimately be used in the home, and will generate lots of data over long periods of time. This will provide a lot of opportunity for software developers to create applications which can analyze the data, present it to the user in a useful way, and integrate it with other medical data. I believe that statistical analysis of tissue scan data of millions of people over a period of years or decades might enable a much more effective diagnosis.

Getting a personal computer into the home was a critical step in the evolution of computer technology, because it brought millions of people into the development cycle. I think the same thing will be true for the evolution of medical technology.

mhack