Tech Watch | InfoWorld Staff » Star Trek-style health care envisioned

February 27, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Star Trek-style health care envisioned

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If an invention think tank founded by a former Microsoft CTO has its way, those Star Trek healing gadgets will become a reality.

Remember Star Trek III? When Dr. McCoy, sent back to 20th-century San Francisco with the rest of the crew, encounters a woman being readied for surgery at a hospital? He frowns on the whole idea of surgery, waves a wand over her and she is miraculously healed. This seems farfetched, but Nathan Myhrvold's Intellectual Ventures actually is pondering development of technology along those lines.

Intellectual Ventures is a combination of a private equity firm and an invention "hothouse," as described by the Churchill Club, which hosted Myhrvold, the company's CEO, at a breakfast presentation Tuesday in Palo Alto, Calif. He worked at Microsoft for 14 years until 2000 and was CTO.

Intellectual Ventures seeks to inspire inventors. "We go to people before they have an invention and fund them to try to have an invention," Myhrvold said.

A couple of the company's ideas include development of Star Trek-like devices for health care that would manipulate a patient's body without movement. This includes a device that could break down the plaque in brain cells that is associated with causing Alzheimer's Disease. "That's sub-cellular surgery but it may not be impossible," Myhrvold said.

Another device under consideration is a helmet that would be used in ambulances to determine the type of stroke a patient has just suffered, to ensure proper treatment, he said.

The Intellectual Ventures business model is contingent on intellectual property and the company finding someone else to build the actual products. Asked about the issue of patents being used to stop innovation, Myrhvold said the company has not had occasion to sue anybody. The company has been licensing technologies and has had considerable revenues, he said.

Nurturing inventors, however, has its difficult moments. Intellectual Ventures has found that its hardest job is dissuading people with ideas that the company does not believe will fly.

"It's a little like the school principal that says, 'I'm sorry, but your little Johnny isn't very smart,'" Myhrvold said.

Posted by Paul Krill on February 27, 2007 11:40 AM

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