Engineering Health: Towards the Tricorder
MIT OpenCourseWare offers this Media Lab course on designing portable diagnostic devices, built around the Tricorder X-Prize challenge to create a handheld tool for reading vital signs and detecting disease biomarkers. Students fabricate and remix component technologies across optical, electrical, biochemical, and molecular diagnostics, working toward integrating them into a working prototype device. The course covers sensor design, signal processing, and biochemical assay methods relevant to consumer and remote-area health monitoring. Materials include lecture notes, project assignments, and design case studies drawn from MIT's Media Arts and Sciences program. It suits students with an engineering or bioengineering background who want hands-on experience building diagnostic hardware rather than a purely theoretical treatment of medical devices. As with other MIT OCW offerings, all materials are free to access under a Creative Commons license, with no certificate offered.