Walter De Brouwer has the mad scientist thing down: curly rumpled hair, lots of talking with his hands – the whole nine yards. After spending decades in the tech industry working on everything from publishing to telecom, time travel and interstellar flight, De Brouwer decided to jump into the health care industry after his son spent a year in the hospital after falling out of a window.
The much-publicized Scanadu Scout, which is slated to ship in the first quarter of 2014, is the result of his last two years of work. The puck-like device is a sleek vital-signs recorder – tracking everything from blood pressure, body temperature and heart rhythm via myriad sensors. The gizmo then beams your vital signs to an app loaded on your phone or tablet, where it’s yours to keep forever. De Brouwer designed the Scanadu Scout to be a DIY doctor’s office, minus the frustration, endless waiting, and lack of empowerment that’s often associated with the health care system.
Wired sat down with De Brouwer in our offices in San Francisco to discuss what it’s been like to delve into the health care space and how the Quantified Self movement will change medicine forever.
Wired: The Scout has obvious tie-ins to Star Trek. Is that why you set up shop at the NASA Ames Research Center?
Walter De Brouwer: It became clear our consumer was a bit like an astronaut because he’s also isolated from the system. When something is wrong, they will not come to save him. It was a little bit like, “Hey! That’s how we consumers get into the health care system.”
We also had this concept of the “tricorder,” and I thought I’m going to talk to NASA to see if we can use their resources for space medicine. Space medicine is the combination of the two coolest words in the world. We met them and they liked the concept because it was Star Trek. They also liked that we would look at their space-medicine assets to see if we could consumerize them. You have this enormous opportunity. You’re in the heart of Silicon Valley. There’s all these smart people around. The NASA connection is really great. The campus is also really great. I used to live there.
Wired: What was that like?
De Brouwer: In the weekends it’s existentially lonely. It’s like being in the desert because everyone is gone. I didn’t have a car so I got stuck on that campus. But there’s military guards. You feel very safe.
Wired: What’s your mission with Scanadu?
De Brouwer: The whole diagnostic part we wanted to recreate. We started with the emergency room. They do the vital signs: respiratory rate, heart rate, diastolic and systolic blood pressure, your temperature, oxygenation. You also have a heart monitor with your ECG. Then they take your blood samples. You get a little container to take your urine and then they take it away to the lab. Another nurse comes then you have to go for imaging.
Scout is sort of the mothership. There’s a complete emergency room in there. Every sensor you can think of we’ve put in there – blood pressure, ECG, infrared, three accelerometers, gyroscope, Bluetooth module, 32-bit microprocessor. This is a product that helps the doctor, partially replaces the doctor, or makes you into a citizen doctor.
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