We’ve seen a rise in consumer health devices in recent years, but I’ve never been impressed with any of them. Until now. DNA Medical Institute Inc. (DMI) is in the advanced stages of developing a device that can check for “hundreds of diseases” from just a single drop of blood within minutes. It’s called the Reusable Handheld Electrolyte and Lab Technology for Humans (rHEALTH) sensor.
Originally developed for NASA, rHEALTH’s greatest weapons are the microscopic testing strips that fit in a small receptacle. You place your blood in that receptacle and the nanostrips and other reagents inside will react to various substances in the blood sample. You’ll then place that receptacle into rHEALTH itself. According to Wired, rHEALTH will analyze the mixture using “lasers that use variations in light intensity and scattering to come up with a diagnosis, from flu to a more serious illness such as pneumonia – or even Ebola – within a few minutes.” In a 2013 Spinoff magazine article, NASA also said that the receptacle is reusable, although I’m not sure if that’s still the case.
As you’ll see in the video below, rHEALTH will be available in three variants. The desktop-bound rHEALTH One will be for research, the rHEALTH X (shown in the topmost image) will be for medical professionals and the compact rHEALTH X (concept image shown above) will be for consumers.
Though it may be a while before we get our hands on the consumer version of the rHEALTH, DMI has proven its technology to several investors and scientific organizations. The aforementioned NASA Spinoff article even mentioned that a version of rHEALTH is already for sale to universities and research centers. And recenty, DMI received one of the Grand Prize awards in the 2014 Nokia Sensing XChallenge, for which the above video was made. In other words, this Tricorder-level wizardry is for real.
