Think you have a cold but can’t prove it? Sifting through WebMD until you convince yourself you have cancer is so last year. With the soon to be launched Scanadu Scout, you’ll be able to keep track of all your vital signs right through a convenient smartphone app that acts as a grim reminder of your delicate mortality. The days of having to go 5 minutes without knowing exactly what your blood pressure is are over, and we can feel the stress driving our blood pressure up already. So if the phrase “It’s like having a doctor in your pocket” titillates you rather than filling you with creeping dread, this may be a wonderful thing for you to purchase and then lose sleep staring at forever.
One of the contestants in Qualcomm’s Tricorder X Prize, Scanadu plans to release the Scout into the wild as of 2013. The device will allow smartphone users to monitor their pulse, blood pressure, heart electrical activity, and temperature through one handy app that never allows you to forget how close you are to certain death. The company also hopes to launch the ScanaFlu saliva testing device and ScanaFlo urine analysis tool next year. If there are any two more similarly named products that you really, really don’t want to confuse for one another, we don’t know what they might be.
Launching next year for just $150, Scanadu’s first generation tricorder will track your Scanadu is billing it’s wares as “a way to check their bodies as often as they check their email,” which sounds like…the worst thing? Yes, the worst thing. For those of you (okay, us) intent on constantly wondering what disease is eating away at your fragile mortal coil today, though, Scanadu’s Scout could offer the unprecedented level of terrified, illness obsessed navel-gazing that so many have been clamoring for.
(via TechCrunch, image courtesy of Scanadu)
- If being neurotic is good for your health, this may be the healthiest product ever
- We’re just glad that fat ambulances aren’t the only advance in health technology of late
- We prefer to turn our obsession to video games
