The vision of medical nanobots swimming through our bodies detecting and treating disease has been a sci-fi dream for years.

Popular Science just published an article about a centimeter long medical microbot currently in development called the Cyberplasm that could be in use as soon as 5 years. This device is nowhere near the nano-scale, but its a very cool start – a bot swimming around detecting and treating disease from inside our bodies. Such a device will be used occasionally by doctors to perform, for example, much less invasive upper and lower GI scoping.

Actual nanobots, however, are probably twenty years away.

Much closer on the horizon is the Medical Tricorder that will allow quick, cheap diagnosis of many diseases from tiny bodily fluid samples. Put the Star Trek-inspired name aside, this one is coming quick. The Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize is challenging researchers to deliver the first generation of Dr. McCoy’s most indispensable device in three and a half years.

It will integrate exponentially growing technologies like artificial intelligence (for example, Watson going to med school), wireless sensing, cloud computing, digital imaging, and lab-on-a-chip technology.

Because it will allow daily monitoring of our health, it will move us away from sick care – where we only act when something’s wrong – to true health care where we monitor and tweek our bodies for optimum performance.

Let’s put the window on the common use of tricorders at about 7 years.

Between the arrival of these two technologies – the tricorder you hold in your hand (7 years) and the medical nanobots that operate inside your body (20 years), there is a potential intermediate technology – a med lab that resides on your body – the dermal patch lab.

Imagine a device that resembles a nicotine patch that is able to obtain minute amounts of blood for practically continuous monitoring for disease. It would keep a record of the body’s temperature, pulse, blood pressure, and hormone levels. It might also prompt the user for an occasional urine sample – or it might make do with perspiration.

It would contain flexible (probably printed) electronics – lab-on-a-chip technology much smaller than than the tricorder. It would have a flexible battery. It would be tough – allowing the user to shower without harming the device, but also cheap to the point of disposability – and would be replaced every week or so on a different location on the body.

It would communicate with your smart phone/tricorder device and the cloud. Epidemics would be tracked in real time. And armed with your complete DNA sequence, your geographical location, and real-time monitoring of your health – your own personal Dr. Watson will be able to prescribe the precise medications and dosages you need.

The user will determine how much of this is background – how much data about himself he cares to process. But optimal health will require a level of monitoring and decision-making far beyond anything we do today. We will push most of this work to our AIs.

Within a few years of the dermal patch lab AI doctors will be able to determine down to the molecule what the patient needs, run simulated drug trials on virtual populations, and then order the manufacture and delivery of a drug for a single patient that perhaps no one in the world has ever used before.

Yesterday was an interesting anniversary. Wired News reports:

March 29, 1993: Teleportation Beams From Sci-Fi to Real Science

1993: Scientists show teleportation is possible, at least theoretically. The downsides: The original teleported object must be destroyed, and it can’t happen instantaneously.

The story goes on to flesh out some of the milestones that have occurred in the teleportation arena in the interrum, including teleporting photons a few meters and teleporting information up to 10 miles.

Gizmodo marked the anniversary by sharing this story with us:

Beam Me Up, Scotty: Scientists Transport a Hunk of Matter 18 Inches

Scientists in Copenhagen took one more step toward the Star Trek transporter, figuring out how to teleport groups of billions of atoms from one place to another using light, quantum mechanics, magnetism and a concept they call “entanglement.” Professor Eugene Polzik and his team managed to move an object about 18 inches, using an excruciatingly complicated process that amounts to some serious magic. Says the Prof:

“Creating entanglement is a very important step, but there are two more steps at least to perform teleportation. We have succeeded in making all three steps — that is entanglement, quantum measurement and quantum feedback.”

Somebody on Facebook said this story was actually six years old. Probably so, as the Reuters story linked in the Gizmodo article isn’t there any more. Still very cool.

Star Trek references aside, this method of teleportation sounds somewhat different from the Star Trek models of teleportation which breaks you down into bits and either beams 1) you or 2) your pattern to the other location where it is reconstituted either 1) from your original matter or 2) locally available materials. (For the record, 1) is the original series and 2) is Next Generation and beyond.) I’m not sure if I would ever want to do 1), but 2) is a big no way. The guy who lands on the other side isn’t me — he just thinks he is. I’m dead.

But THIS approach, from the sketchy details provided, might move the whole person intact, irrespective of what the Wired article says about the original having to be destroyed. As I understand it, if you recreate my quantum states, you recreate me. You don’t just have a copy in that case, you have the original. Would the subjective me-ness that is me come along for the ride? Theoretically, yes.

Still, come to think of it, I think I would have to pass. Not that it looks like anyone is going to be offering free teleportation rides any time soon.

I’m just sayin’.