To date, the personal diabetes meter is the only true commercial success that has found widespread use and allows individuals to perform at home medical blood tests without a specialist present and use the corresponding results to make an informed medical decision. However, with the advent of wearable technologies, a new paradigm in healthcare is on the horizon. The ability to continuously monitor a range of relevant physiological conditions throughout a person’s normal routine will allow unprecedented medical information to be collected that saves time, money, and ultimately will assist the healthcare specialist and lead to a dramatic improvement in quality of life. Unfortunately, first generation wearable technology falls fall short and the prospect of a universal Star Trek “tricorder” medical device is still far away. Microneedle technology being developed at Sandia National Laboratories and the University of New Mexico might be the first technological solution to this problem. Dr. Ronen Polsky was raised in Las Cruces, New Mexico and is a trained analytical chemist. He has over 60 publications and written three book chapters on subjects ranging from novel nanomaterials, three-dimensional battery electrodes and electrochemical biosensing devices. After a one-year post-doctoral fellowship at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, he began working at Sandia National Laboratories in 2005. He recently began a program using microneedles for the transdermal sensing of physiological markers for human performance testing and in collaboration with the University of New Mexico Medical School is performing clinical trials for the technology. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

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