Dynamical Biomarkers Group Reaches Final Of Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE Challenge

TAIPEI, Taiwan, April 13, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- HTC Corporation today announced that the Dynamical Biomarkers Group was declared the highly commended runner-up to American team Final Frontiers Medical Devices in the Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE, an exceptionally demanding challenge to develop a lightweight, wireless diagnostic tool capable of accurately diagnosing 13 health conditions and capture five real-time vital signs, leveraging advanced mobile, wireless and medical technology, and artificial intelligence.

The Dynamical Biomarkers Group (DBG) beat 28 other teams out of over 300 pre-entries from 38 countries with its 'DeepQ' Tricorder device, a complex advanced diagnostics kit that demonstrates superior diagnostic accuracy yet is within the 5lbs weight limit and is easy to use by both nurses at a clinic and consumers at home.

The team was founded by Dr. Chung-Kang Peng of Harvard Medical School in 2013, while he was founding dean of the College of Health Sciences and Technology at National Central University in Taiwan, and was co-led by Dr. Edward Chang of HTC's Research and Healthcare division. The multi-disciplinary team comprised clinicians, researchers, scientists and engineers from HTC and National Central University, with contributions from biomedical research groups in Taiwan from National Taiwan University, National Taiwan University Hospital, National Tsing Hua University, National Cheng Kung University, Taipei Medical University, Landseed Hospital and Cathay General Hospital.

"DeepQ is a superb testimony to the inter- and intra-institute collaboration, and clearly demonstrates world-class skills in medical understanding, advanced technical prowess, device design and productization that were required to excel against such high-calibre competition," said Cher Wang, Chairwoman and CEO of HTC. "At HTC, we are fully aligned with the XPRIZE ethos to improve people's lives through technology, and their remarkable Tricorder concept has the potential to impact societies in all corners of the world. Congratulations must go to all ten finalists and to Qualcomm Foundation for sponsoring this life-changing challenge."

Dr. Jou Jing-yang, President of National Central University, said, "Interdisciplinary cooperation was the key to this remarkable achievement. According to the latest U.S. News ∓ World Report, NCU is ranked 4^th in Taiwan and is equipped with substantial research and development capability, which made a vital contribution to the team's endeavor."

The 'DeepQ' Tricorder derived inspiration from the traditional Chinese medicine approach of 'observe, listen, inquire, and feel' to transform complicated medical examinations to an easy and autonomous home healthcare patterns. Given the universal healthcare available in Taiwan, the team appreciated the importance of controlling device cost, while striving to extend technology to provide quality home and medical healthcare in rural regions. In such areas, where people can wait months to see a doctor, 'DeepQ' has been proven in practice to diagnose 150 patients within a few days.

With its high degree of accuracy and simple user interface, 'DeepQ' can help consumers make their own reliable health diagnoses anywhere at any time, bringing much improved healthcare accessibility to rural areas at manageable cost. The team demonstrated that combining big data and scalable machine learning enables a typically small annotated training dataset obtained via an Institutional Review Board to achieve remarkably high disease prediction accuracy.

About the 'DeepQ' Tricorder Device
DeepQ consists of three 'senses': optical sense, vital sense, and blood/urine sense.

• Optical sense comprises a wireless camera base and two lenses for diagnosing otitis media and melanoma, respectively.
• Vital sense monitors heart rate, respiration rate, body temperature, oxygen saturation, and blood pressure, diagnosing hypertension, atrial fibrillation, and sleep apnea.
• Blood/Urine sense conducts tests for conditions including diabetes, anemia, tuberculosis (TB), hepatitis A (HAV), leukocytosis, and urinary tract infection.

About HTC
HTC Corporation aims to bring brilliance to life. As a global innovator in smart mobile and virtual reality technology, HTC has produced award-winning products and industry firsts since its inception in 1997, including the critically acclaimed HTC 10, HTC One and HTC Desire lines of smartphones. The pursuit of brilliance is at the heart of everything we do, inspiring best-in-class design and game-changing mobile and virtual reality experiences for consumers around the world. HTC is listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE: 2498). www.htc.com

About National Central University
As one of the top universities in Taiwan, National Central University consists of eight colleges: Liberal Arts, Science, Engineering, Management, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Earth Sciences, Hakka Studies, and Health Sciences and Technology, along with several research centers which cover many cutting-edge disciplines.

With the motto "Sincerity and Simplicity," NCU endeavors to cultivate talents with deep concern for the humanities and global vision, hoping to make NCU a model university in the new epoch.

About XPRIZE
|XPRIZE, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, is the global leader in designing and implementing innovative competition models to solve the world's grandest challenges. XPRIZE utilizes a unique combination of gamification, crowd-sourcing, incentive prize theory, and exponential technologies as a formula to make 10x (vs. 10%) impact in the grand challenge domains facing our world. XPRIZE's philosophy is that—under the right circumstances— igniting rapid experimentation from a variety of diverse lenses is the most efficient and effective method to driving exponential impact and solutions to grand challenges. Active competitions include the $30M Google Lunar XPRIZE, the $20M NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE, the $15M Global Learning XPRIZE, the $10M Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE, the $7M Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE, the $7M Barbara Bush Foundation Adult Literacy XPRIZE, the $5M IBM Watson AI XPRIZE, the $1.75M Water Abundance XPRIZE and the $1M Anu & Naveen Jain Women's Safety XPRIZE. For more information, visit http://www.xprize.org/.

HTC, the HTC logo are the trademarks of HTC Corporation. All other names of companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

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SOURCE HTC Corporation

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