Remember that Star Trek scene were Doctor McCoy scans someone with his little whirring thing and said dramatically, “He’s probably a little bit sick, Jim!” Neither do I, but that’s the results you get with a new handheld sickness scanner that’s been developed by a group of European researchers.
The $280 device scans the level of antioxidants in the bloodstream, which the researchers say is a good measure of how generally healthy people are, as they can be lowered by sickness and also smoking, alcohol, bad food, too little sleep, stress and UV radiation.
What the scanner doesn’t do is measure any specific illnesses or health problems, which could be pretty handy to know. Apparently, it’s designed more to help people tell if they’re living a healthy lifestyle than actually detecting disease.
I think we’ll probably stick to our method of just seeing if we feel crappy or not.
That don’t cost nothin’.
[Optische Technologien via Gizmodo]