welcome to National Central University

The “Dynamical Biomarkers Group” led by NCU includes elites from academic, medical and industrial communities. This team has been in the US$10M Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE, the largest medical competition in history, for a lengthy three-year period. Winning along the way in the competition to date, the team now advances to be one of the top two finalist teams contending for the world championship!

This Taiwanese team is led by Professor Peng Chung-kang, the founding Dean of the College of Health Sciences and Technology at NCU. Besides researchers from NCU, the team also includes members from National Taiwan University, National Taiwan University Hospital, National Tsing Hua University, National Cheng Kung University, Taipei Medical University, Cathay General Hospital, Landseed Hospital, and the elite team of advanced technology and R&D led by the Vice President of HTC, Dr. Edward Chang.

The Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE is a medical competition inspired by the story of Star Trek. More than 300 teams around the world were attracted to participate in this competition. The Taiwanese team successfully became one of the top seven teams through a series of fierce in initial rounds. Finally, the team advances to be one of the top two finalist teams.

The medical tricorders envisioned in the competition are required to be able to continuously record five main vital signs including blood pressure, heart rate, body temperature, respiratory rate and oxygen saturation, and diagnose 13 diseases or health conditions. Besides meeting the requirements of accurate vital-sign monitoring and precise disease diagnosis, the main challenge is to design a tricorder whose hardware and user interface are simple and easy to operate. In addition, the whole system is required to weigh less than five pounds to meet the modern technological requirements of being “light, thin, and small.”

Now the systems designed by the competitors have entered the consumer testing phase. The organizer of the competition will announce the world championship in the first quarter of 2017.