Podcast investigates Leicester’s non-invasive A&E diagnosis unit

In this week's Planet Earth Podcast Professor Paul Monks from our Department of Chemistry and Professor Tim Coats from our Department of Cardiovascular Science explain to Richard Hollingham how technology used in space science and atmospheric chemistry is now being developed for medical purposes with our Diagnostics Development Unit.

In the Leicester Royal Infirmary’s A&E Unit, Paul and Tim point out the technologies which combine to provide a comprehensive, non-invasive diagnostic process. This takes up the first seven minutes of the podcast, then after another story Richard Hollingham tries the DDU out for himself at about 15’30”.

Right at the end the idea is raised, as it has been on many occasions, that what is being developed here is analogous to the sick bay on the USS Enterprise and that, if and when the whole affair is miniaturised and handheld what we will have invented is, essentially, a tricorder.

Planet Earth Podcast is part of the Planet Earth Online website from the Natural Environment Research Council. You can listen online, download the podcast or read a transcript.