Medical researchers around the world are chasing a new £6.5m prize, which will be awarded to the team that can make a working version of a fictional Star Trek prop.

The Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize hopes to spur researchers on to use wireless sensing and artificial intelligence in their quest to develop a portable medical diagnosis gadget.

Tricorders were a series of gizmos first seen in the original Star Trek series, which first hit TV screens back in the 1960s. The medical version was capable of collecting information about a person and diagnosing diseases, by simply scanning it over the patient’s body.

A total of 15 common diseases will have to be accurately diagnosed by the winning device, which is meant to be used by normal people rather than medical professionals. It will also have to take various measurements from a patient, such as their blood pressure and breathing rate.

The organisers say that the device can be any size and shape at all, but it must weigh less than 2.3kg. It must also be able to store a person’s information securely, while still being accessible remotely over the internet.