This message from the X-Prize Foundation is in response to the letter I published yesterday. They seem to feel the contest is fine as-is and my objections are without merit.Dear Bob,
I am the Senior Director in charge of this competition and I appreciate receiving your letter of interest dated January 11. First, let me offer you my highest level of encouragement for your creation of a SIDS monitoring device. As you know, medical technology is one of the most difficult areas to make significant progress in. To make something really work and pass through all the regulatory hurdles in this space is challenging as you point out. Second, my sincere personal condolences on the loss of your child. I understand and respect your total commitment to solve this challenging problem and admire your dedication and passion to address this urgent need.
We announced the Qualcomm Tricorder X PRIZE in January 2012 and spent a year refining the guidelines and structure of the competition, which includes the winning parameters, registration fees, rules and a timeline. The guidelines were finalized and released this month after receiving input from the scientific and medical communities, companies working in this space, and the general public. We are asking teams to develop a medical device that will allow consumers to diagnose a set of 15 diseases and monitor 5 vital signs, independent of a healthcare provider or facility. While we recognize that there are a number of unique new technologies, including yours, that address important public health concerns, we could not include every one of them in this competition. We did choose a range of core and elective conditions that are widely recognized as being significant for public health in North America and also offered a wide range of sensing and interpretive challenges.
As of today there isn’t an integrated personal health device on the market that does everything that we’re requiring in the guidelines. That is the essence of the competition and sets the stage for a unified solution that can capture data from many types of sensors… potentially including yours. As with many innovation competitions and Prizes, there is a registration fee required to participate. The registration fee – which is $5,000 until April 10th – helps us cover operational expenses such as numerous team and judging summits, ongoing communications to many stake holders, comprehensive device testing and judging processes that are essential to staging a fair and objective competition.
Please realize that we are a competition that intends to drive innovation and help to usher in a new digital health marketplace. We are not investors and in fact, we are not even the Judges who will act totally independent of us in determining the finalists. Our goal is stimulate an influx of consumer devices on the market in the near future. Even if you decided not to compete, the overall effect of these competitions will help to lift all boats in the digital health space, including yours we believe.
I encourage you to consider entering the Qualcomm Tricorder X PRIZE and/or Nokia Sensing X CHALLENGE, or join a current pre-registered team and incorporate your device into their submission. Although SIDS is not one of the defined conditions in the requirements it does not mean that the inclusion of your technology would not be advantageous to existing teams who all seek to commercialize their solutions. Inventing, developing, funding and bringing to market medical technology is a very difficult endeavor and a team approach may help. At the X PRIZE Foundation, one of our jobs is to provide a forum for sharing ideas, concepts and new technologies that might have otherwise gone unnoticed. That has been a guiding principle of this and all our competitions. We hope that you will consider becoming involved on this basis.
If you have additional questions or would like to speak further, please don’t hesitate to contact me.
Sincerely
Mark Winter
Senior Director, Qualcomm Tricorder X PRIZE and Nokia Sensing X CHALLENGE
That’s a well-reasoned and thoughtful reply. Cringe isn’t wrong in giving his personal view, but Qualcomm also isn’t wrong in having their own agenda and tailoring their rules to match. It’s just a bit unfortunate that there’s considerable overlap in the goal and a similar name–which neither party can claim to own or be inventor of.
In the future, I think Bob might do better not calling people “stupid,” especially in public.
dang, 2nd again!!
Paul: Do you have something to add, or is it all about being first?
mg, here is some food for your peanut:
“It’s not whether you win or lose, but whether you win.” Donald J. Trump
so yes, it is all about being first to post on this message board.
– Using trump as an exemplar – I think that says it all !!
Gee only $5,000 to enter?
Guess I should form a contest start-up, I’m thinking of “The Producers” as a business model.
That seems to be a reasonable response.
It seems a touch hypocritical for Cringely to criticize Qualcomm for not jumping on his tech immediately when he himself has been sitting on it for 7 years.
Cringe has invented a SID detector, and the X-Prize folks are looking for something to diagnose a set of 15 diseases and monitor 5 vital signs. Not the same thing. So what is the fuss about?
Bob, why not try a more constructive approach? Say, collect donations on this site from your audience to support your team’s entry in the contest… perhaps in return of a multiplier of the pledge in case of a win… At $50 per entry, it takes only 100 contributions to raise the $5,000. Even if you were to offer only a tenfold return to each investor, in case your team wins, you’d still only pay back $50,000, out of the prize money. To see if this could fly all it would take on your side is an article and a PayPal button… you can always refund the pledges if your team is no longer willing or able to continue or if you do not raise the $5,000…
You say you and your team invested a significant amount of time and perhaps resources in this project… Then you just abandoned it six years ago… Hmmm. Maybe you can still re-assemble the team or add new members… bring the prototype up to date, with new technology that came to market since 2006… You could get a head-start on the other teams, if you truly have a prototype that is close to the target…
I said above “your team invested a significant amount of time and perhaps resources
It is not possible to edit comments after they are posted. Anyway, I meant to say “time and other resources”.
Time is the single most valuable resource that each of us has… Why let the time you and your team invested in your project over several years go to waste? Why not try and do your best to bring it to fruition? What stops you? Where there is a will, there is a way…
Do what ernest says. put up a PayPal button and my $50 is yours.
They have something like this already, it’s called KickStarter.
Yes, indeed, there is KickStarter And it’s been used successfully quite a few projects over the years.
However, Bob’s project most likely will not qualify. The rules, those nasty rules (again :-), forbid entry of “baby products”, “electronic surveillance equipment”, “health and personal-care products”, “medical and safety-related products”.
Also, there is no million dollar prize either 🙂
Well x-prize or no, if you have a device that can prevent SIDS, you will have zero problem getting funding. I don’t even have kids but would buy several of these devices for friends and family who do. Maybe you have project burn out but just say the word and the internet community will organize to get this to market, save lives, and make you rich.
KICKSTARTER
This isn’t the first time that Mr. Cringely has run up against “Sorry, them’s the rules, no wait, THEM’S the rules, no wait, THOSE are the rules” of the X-Prizes. He attempted to participate in an earlier X-Prize by landing small packages on the moon. Sadly, he wanted to make a TV-show out of the results, and the X-Prize said no, as well as changing the rules each iteration to make his approach impractical.
It seems like X-Prize has some idea what they want, specify the rules poorly, Mr. Cringely (or others) comes up with creative solutions that meet them, and they reply “Oh, no, we didn’t mean the X we actually asked for, instead we meant this new rule X-prime that we actually want”.
this was what they called in the BC era “refining by fire.” oh, look, it burned some of the brass out of the gold! let us now make a golden calf from the good stuff, and maybe it will work this time!
these prize guys didn’t solve from “X”, they left out a couple steps.
onward.
If early humans would have acted like modern day bureaucrats, we would not have this conversation. Thank goodness we didn’t have an X-Price back then.
Funny that two commenters have already called the Qualcomm guy’s reply is “reasonable” etc. Either you guys are Qualcomm trolls, or you are very sincere people without a bullsh*t-detecting bone in your bodies.
Because it looks just like a bland form letter to me. Except for the first para, it’s all boilerplate, and has probably been sent out to hundreds of people already.
I wouldn’t be surprised if “Mark Winter” was every bit as fake as Betty Crocker, and some anonymous admin assistant spends her days composing the stilted, arms-length, overly-formal “personal condolences” stuff at the top. You know, like a corporate greeting-card writer.
If this man is real, there’s no way in hell he “understands” Bob’s “total commitment”. If he did, he wouldn’t spout such patronizing, condescending, time-wasting pablum for public consumption.
I think less of Qualcomm after reading this reply. They’d have been better off ignoring him.
Here, here!
It’s actually “hear, hear”, but that’s just me being precious lol.
Ha! Nicely put Sir/Madam! Must admit I thought it was a kind of “me too, me too, I agree” kind of thing. Oh well!! 😉
Ah the Internet…not only tells the facts, but explains them: ” “Hear, hear” is a shortened version of “hear ye, hear ye,” which goes back to British Parliament in the 1600s, if not earlier. The expression was — and is — used to draw attention to what someone is saying. It implies agreement with the speaker or, in modern times, the writer.” http://askville.amazon.com/correct-spelling-Hear-hear-expression-agreement/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=43544030
Of course there is some boilerplate in it. They will receive many projects that don’t fit the rules. At least they put a personal note in it.
After reading Bob’s letter, I wasn’t sure about the nature of his beef:
1. Was it with the use of the name “Tricorder”?
2. Was it with the $5,000 entry price tag?
3. Was it with 35 months of wait to hear the results?
The way I see it, they have to be fair, and the fact that Bob already has some technology, should not preclude other teams from having a fair chance. That is the nature of a competition. Plus, it seems that while Bob’s device works great for SIDS, the goal of the competition is to diagnose 15 diseases, which it currently does not, so maybe it does need those 35 months, or it just doesn’t belong in this competition since it was designed for a different purpose. (And since the device could save lives, maybe Bob should find another way of making it happen sooner.)
As for the $5000 entry fee, the first question that comes to mind is how many teams can and will participate? Twenty? Times $5000 = $100k. That’s 1% of the $10m prize. Couldn’t Qualcomm find another $100k for processing fees? But then the second question comes to mind: if it’s free, how many submissions will there be, since there is nothing to lose? Probably 200 or even 2000, since all the crazies will submit too. And that’s already a different order of magnitude for administrative expenses needed to sift through all the junk. So, I’d call the entry fee a “serious intention” filter, and as such it totally makes sense.
Well said. There’s nothing to bash Qualcomm about in this, and that really was a reasonable response from them. Here is where Bob went wrong:
“Then last week you announced a $10 million prize seeking almost exactly what we had already built.”
They aren’t seeking what he built, they are seeking a device to detect a list of 15 diseases. The prize is for specific functionality, not just something called a Tricorder. (Also, there is no $10M prize. There are 3 prizes totalling $10M.)
“We can claim your prize in 30 days, max”
Nope. Not even close. You can’t claim the prize with a device that doesn’t meet the requirements of detecting a list of 15 specific diseases. And it’s not Qualcomm’s fault that they didn’t just want a SIDS detector.
Reading the guidelines, it looks like the SIDS detector is a much better fit for the Nokia Sensing X Challenge, under the Physiology category, and really ought to be entered there.
Or… Kickstarter! Why compete for just a chance at a prize, when people will give you money on the basis of what you’ve already done?
Not saying I completely agree with Bob, here, but you have no idea what his device can and can not do. Assuming he is literate and has read the contest requirements, if he thinks it can satisfy the goals of the contest with about thirty days of additional work, what information do you have to contradict him?
I can appreciate your frustration. This was a pretty well reasoned response however. Unfortunate that there isn’t a clear mutual fit. Have you considered taking your product to kickstarter? Perhaps the governmental regulations are just too insurmountable if your invention is considered a medical device. Couldn’t you call it something else, outside the regulators & lawyers, but indicate it has a wide variety of uses? We see products and items all the time in stores, on tv, etc. which suggest they address some kind of medical issue, but that they haven’t been fda approved, yadda yadda (i.e. the fine print). Surely there is some avenue there to pursue… but your a smart guy, you have probably already explored all those without much luck. Hopefully your posting will get some renewed interest & help.
Having looked at the competition guidelines, there seems room for improvement.
These aren’t the usual prize-incentive competition terms (specify a goal and the first person to reach it wins, no time limits). These are fixed-duration competitions, and in the case of the Nokia Sensing one, seem particularly vague in what you’re supposed to be demonstrating. “A Useful Medical Device” seems to be the answer.
This kind of competition needs to be open-duration, fixed capability with well defined success criteria. Fixed duration rounds with judges assessing likelihood of success is a bad path.
I gotta go with the X Prize on this one. The contest is fine as-is. Enter the device in the contest! Even better, publish all the specs, and encourage all teams to improve upon it.
I feel the Qualcomm reply was way to obtuse and wordy. Too much effort for a rebuff. Certainly smells of boiler-plate.
The prize money is not a filter for serious contenders because I believe Qualcomm stated what it was there, precisely, to filter the contestants and cover the costs of doing so. For such a large prize, yes, many cranks will try for it, but they should be fairly easy to spot at the mail-opening stage. Besides any crank can also aim to raise the necessary 5k from sites such as KS. Why not? Are any of the small investors there any more scientifically trained?
Also please don’t forget this is Bob’s blog and he has a very real, personal connection to the cause he promotes. This is a terrifying, life-threatening condition and as any parent will know causes a gut-wrenching spasm of fear just thinking about it.
A shame Bob’s ploy didn’t work. Good on him for trying!
Forget about Kickstarter,
Bob’s project does not qualify, on several grounds. The KickStarter rules forbid entry of “baby products”, “electronic surveillance equipment”, “health and personal-care products”, “medical and safety-related products”, among other restrictions.
Maybe it would qualify as an alarm clock.
Let us not forget that X-Prize’s approach, however much you trolls would like to shit all over it, has brought about some pretty cool fucking stuff – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansari_X_Prize
“The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.” – Helen Keller
Well that is certainly a useful invention we can all make use of.
That prize had a clear, objective, specified goal and an open time limit.
This one doesn’t.
That is hardly a damning argument.
Here is the problem with a SIDS monitor… There are about 2500 SIDS deaths in the USA each year. Lets suppose Cringely’s monitor is an amazing improvement and saves 80% of the kids, or 2000 a year. That would be a tremendous accomplishment, right? The problem is it is not a 100% solution and 500 kids would still die from SIDS each year. That translates into the potential of 500 very expensive law suits each year. Given the emotion involved and a jury trial the first suit could put Cringely and Company out of business and remove the device from the USA market. The next year 2000 more babies will die because the lawyer of one family wiped out the company and the device.
The problem extends beyond SIDS. A device like Cringely’s could be used for other medical monitoring applications. Countless other people could be helped by it.
Perhaps the more important thing Qualcomm can do is help remove the legal obstacles involved in bringing innovative technology like this to market.
If you are an engineer and have spent a night in a hospital caring for a sick kid, you quickly see how primitive some of the medical equipment really is. We can do so much better.
While I applaud Mr. Cringely and Qualcomm on their efforts. Little good can come from them until we fix the massive legal problems preventing innovation in the medical field.
Forget this Qualcomm X Prize, I know this Nigerian prince who will send you $10M once his bank accounts are unfrozen, which you can do by wiring him $5,000 to cover his expenses.
Gee, anew invention — wonder if it is patentable:
Contest as a profit source.
Shame on them!
If Qualcomm were committed to solving SIDS, they would not write such a letter !
If I had Qualcomm’s money I would do something more in response to your letter, like send you enough money to save the lives of so many children, but they obviously have another agenda which of course they are legally entitled too and one that probably better helps their shareholders. Corporations are a sad reflection of our society when they can not at least think of something better then merely stubbornly sticking with their self advertising competition.
I have been reading your column since the beginning. I used to buy the hard copy Magazine solely for your column alone, so I am happy to pay you for a subscription when or if that happens. As I don’t have Qualcomm’s money, I just hope you keep writing and the subscription is not too high for my meagre income and savings.
There are a zillion good things any company could spend their money on. If you are angry at Qualcomm because they refuse to simply give Cringley money, you should be angry at all big companies. Why not be angry at Apple? Why don’t they finance Cringely? They have the money right?
Well Reiner, you are obviously correct that there are a zillion things anyone can spend money on.
However my point is that they are putting themselves out as someone who is committed to solving SIDS, but their letter is not consistent with their advertised commitment. Their actions indicate that they have another silent over-riding agenda. There is a common name for this type of behaviour.
[…] X-Prize Foundation defends their poorly-conceived Qualcomm Tricorder contest […]
If Kickstarter is out, why not go on Shark Tank? This seems right up their alley.
Mark Cuban tends to help out a lot of businesses that have a child component.
In fact, why not talk to Mark Cuban directly? Didn’t you say in a past column that you and him are acquaintances?
Don’t use an existing crowdfunding solution – why pay the extra % fee to someone else when you could more than likely collect your donations through a campaign on this site? Plus I’m sure Cringely’s years in the tech sector means he knows a few people who have $5k in pocket change at all times and might be willing to throw in a few bucks. 😉