silicon valley engineers work to create the "star trek" tri-corder, a device to diagnose patients with a single click. my guest this morning. next, life on mars. a reporter and quentin hardy of the "new york times" this week on "press: here." good morning, everyone. i'm scott mcgrew. lets get right to it. a clip from the old '60s series "star trek." >> seems fine now. >> that in dr. mccoy's hand is part of a tri-corder, a device

in this case diagnoses the patient by waving it back and forth. in reality it's a salt shaker. the props department wanted to save money. for tv purposes it's a tri-corder. this is not a proper, the equivalent. it can read your vital signs from temperature to blood pressure just by holding it to your head. walter wanted to raise $100,000 in funding to create the device. he accidentally raised more than a million and a half, breaking records on the site, futurist, inventor and knight. less talk about the knight thing real fast. i don't think we've had a knight. i mean a knight with a sword on either side of your shoulders. >> it's a little less sexy. everyone who has been in the army in belgium, when you're an officer and retire you get that

order. >> still the only order of knight i'm aware of we've had on this show. i'm simultaneously trans fixed by your device and kind of doubtful. you've gotten the thing to work. this is an actual product that's going to ship to people that works the way you say it's going to work? >> yes. >> please expand. lets just spend a moment in geek dom. i shine a light on my forehead. >> you've got one in your pocket. lets take it out. >> basically how do you use the body's energy and electricity? well, you make a circuit. so we make a circuit with the body. because we have to have here, heart, ecg here, we have to have pulse, distance between them, temperature, infrared. all these things together with our al go rhythms, they produce

very, very accurate vital sign readings. >> what's it going to tell me. >> everything when you go bo an er room, everything you have in the er room, it can tell you. >> pulse, heart rate, gives you temperature, also core, body. diastolic and systolic blood pressure. it can give you respiratory rates, of course, and pulse ox. >> the ability of how much oxygen with a breath. >> ecg, you could have more technical things. everything you have in an er room. so when we surveyed this, the consumer only wanted this -- they wanted this to have in 10 seconds. this was the big constraint. they wanted 10 seconds, around the same time people sit on a

bull in a rodeo. this is our attention span. our attention span is eight to ten seconds. >> you're the engineers out there, they get the temperature, other things, pulse oximeter would be a light. blood pressure. that's the one i'm fuzzy. blood pressure you have to put a cuff on an squeeze. >> blood pressure, people have tried for a long time. the only thing they came up with, which was actually not bad was pulse wave transit time. with an algorithm you can translate in blood pressure. not very accurate. especially diastolic blood pressure goes all over the map. plp is a very difficult one. that's why when you go to the doctor, he's doing it three, four times. >> that's my question, how are you solving that in a sort of fifth grade level so i

understand it. >> basically all about mathematics and fusion. we worked on it for two years without -- suddenly in six months -- when we found the first way how to go about it and reality with the device, now up 95% accuracy. >> data points that signal you what blood pressure is. >> this is empressive you got this in one tiny device. i'm still unclear as to some of the bigger benefits. say, for instance, my blood pressure is irregularly high, heartbeat irregular, how does this expedite you getting to the doctor. >> in the company we all use it on ourselves, of course. that has changed how i treat my

health. for instance, i set my own alerts now. i have a time series on my heart rate, my blood pressure. well, i can set my own alerts, because i set my alerts, heart rate at 40. i've had a very low heart rate, i take beta blockers so the heart rate goes slow. i try to balance my systolic and diastolic blood pressure with hypertension medicine. i must see my heart rate doesn't go to -- >> the measure connects to your phone. data stored here, in the cloud, my doctor? how do you want to make this extend. >> we don't store data. that's for the consumer to do. they have several options to do that. they can do that on cloud. everything happens on the device. >> you just want to sell the

box. >> no. we want algorithms -- >> i understand why sensitive you don't store my data. if you sell a million of these, that would be incredibly valuable data not just financially but medically. >> we survey to the consumer very well. he did not want data -- it's a bit like a banker where you have a banker and analyst. there's a firewall. we want to be the people of the computation, algorithm. we can't store the data, the consumer won't like it. somebody else should do it. >> find that interesting in the sense i find it contradictly to what i might want. if a stroke is coming on, god forbid i hope that's several years away. if a stroke is coming on and picked it up, part of me wishes it would go to the cloud, my

doctor, an ambulance will be called. >> it will. it will be your data. we have the commodity models to do that. >> you will be able to store your data over time and observe behavior. >> you will choose if you want to sell it or not. we don't want to be a data mart. >> lets take a quick break. we'll go to commercial, come back and start with your question in just a minute.

welcome back to "press: here." before the break i cut you off so we could take the break. go ahead. >> you built the device. three times when we were talking you refer to yourself as algorithm people but you're suggesting being part of a much larger kind of business around data, visualization of what

people have done over time. perhaps insurance companies and modifying behavior. are you going to play a role, leave it up to the world to decide. >> the world will not decide, the consumer will decide. whatever the consumer will do will eclipse. >> are you approached by companies, developers? >> sure, sure. i think we have -- we know what we want. our agenda is pretty clear. so when i say algorithms, it's the heart of what we do. what our vig is that one day these algorithms, pretty close will be diagnostic so we can build them into a car, a kitchen, where you have this collection of medical data.

perhaps even the collection as a service. >> objects that collect information. >> preventive medicine will completely disappear into the environment. >> walter when you went from $100, in crowd funding, you raised $1.5 million in a single day. >> yes. >> did that change anything for you in my concern isf my company raised too much money we might get fancy, all of a sudden the catered lunches get fancier. how are you able to absorb making that much money as opposed to the tenth you expected to make? >> it really change our company drastically. not because of the money, because we started with good capital before. it was about having 10,000 clients out there, 10,000 customers. >> it's not free money.

>> certainly we were not that anymore, we were a product company. how is this consumer experience going to be. >> 10,000 people, $1.5 million each. >> it's $1.6 and we have 9,400. >> what do they get for the $100, whatever it is. >> they get this. >> they get that when it's delivered. >> plus they have a couple of disposables, they can do urine analysis. this is like the mothership, collects data, molecular diagnostic data. also working on blood very soon. saliva. urine. but also in there we are working very hard to really put imaging in there. >> imaging. what imaging? >> we want to look beneath the

skin. you know, we have to be more than 10 millimeters. >> you kind of come from the future, don't you? >> "star trek." >> the "star trek" thing helped, i think, enormously. if you tri-corder everyone of a certain age. >> the sexiest idea of the 21st century. >> did you look at it on "star trek" and say lets build that? >> no. i think every baby boomer watched that series and didn't see it as that. >> let me ask you, walter. this looks impressive. i watched "star trek," i think these guys did, too. >> you know we did. >> that's true. we get the comparison, i get 9,000 backers, early adopters, i

feel like this is generation one. i feel like getting me to invest $100 in like a video game console from another funding site doesn't seem as important as investing $200 in something that could save my life. how -- i feel like implicit trust needs to be there. how are you going to bridge that gap and explain and get them to trust the fact this device works and will help them. >> well, the first 10s,000, there are researchers, taking part in the feasibility study. everyone is with informed consent. everyone also how many times do i use it. they will be connected, the 10,000. they will see who lights up. they will see who is scanning what. >> you created a kind of social network. >> global body map.

>> this is interesting. >> make it quick, doug. >> how does it change your behavior? how do you find using this. >> for me it changed, for instance, my behavior towards medicine. i told my doctor, look, you gave me, you know, this beta blocker, but my heart rate goes down, this goes up. i want to have more balance, give me another one. >> this makes it faster and more fun as well. all right. walter debrouwer, thanks for coming from the future. >> some people drive tesla, my next drove a mars probe. mars recovery driver scott maxwell when "press: here" returns.

unrestrained joy from nasa engineers and scientists one year ago as mars curiosity rover sits down safely after a 350 million mile spaceflight. welcome back. in that year curiosity has sent back 60,000 pictures, last week curiosity made its first solo drive navigating itself on the martian surface. up until then it had human drivers driving by computer command and remote control. one of those drivers was scott maxwell, planetary society once described maxwell as exuberant, always smiling and a great galloping puppy of a mars geek. thank you for being with us. i hope you take that in the compliment they intended. >> there are much worse things they can say about me. i'm happy to have that in my

description. >> the first thing they asked you first was were you nervous. didn't want everyone to say, scott maxwell, he drove into a rock. >> i was confident the landing would work. >> people were ludicrous, a crane, airbag, parachute. >> it's like the least in sane thing you can possibly do. we have been landing things on mars for quite a while and we've gotten good at it. they sequester themselves and focus on engineering so i was very confident that would work. >> what about the driving, though. you're in charge of driving a billion dollar product that is millions of miles amp and it's all up to you. if you crash into a rock, everybody is fired. >> they have left $2.5 billion, mars science laboratory, curiosity is $2.5 billion.

>> sticker price, it's the parts that kill you. >> getting a repair man. >> right. but at the time that i started driving in a cell, i had been driving mur rovers, so i knew what i was doing pretty well. fortunately the team of other rover drivers is a great team. fantastic guys, brilliant, not afraid to say what they think, guys and girls. not afraid to say what they think. if you have an idea, dumb idea, they will be the first one to tell you it's a dumb idea. not in a mean way. everybody focused on lets do the right thing for the rover, best possible thing for the rover. everybody is determined to go to that end. i knew these people. they were really smart and great people. i knew that if i had something dumb to do, they were going to keep me from doing it. the rover is smart. hey, here are dumb things i would like you to not do. for example, along this drive you're going to experience -- we

believe you're going to experience tilt of 10 degrees. if you see anything more than 12 degrees, you're probably off course. i should stop and wait for help. we could use the rover systems to keep it safe. >> what's the lag between driving, sending a signal up, getting there and finding out whether or not it executed. >> the planets are so far apart, best case scenario, one-way time is three minutes. push forward on the joystick, rover doesn't move three minutes. then you see the cliff coming and you pull back on the joystick but by then it's too late. >> that does not help. >> we couldn't possibly drive them that way. three minutes is the best case scenario. 22 minutes is the worst. imagine driving your car. >> put it in and see what happens. >> we're planning the next day and coming up with a list of

what we want the rover to do that day. we e-mail it and the rover spends the day clocking its commands. it stops and e-mails us back a package and says here is what i did, the world around me looks like, pictures i toochl the rover goes to sleep and spend the night building up -- >> how incredibly thrilling is that to get a package of stuff you executed. >> oh, my god, it's so great. we're so lucky to be alive in a time and a place when the very first time of all of human history we can turn this red light in the sky that used to be a god into a place. we can explore there and see things on there that has never been seen by anybody before. when you're getting data down from the rover. >> everything is new. >> you are the first person who has ever seen that. it's tremendous. for somebody like me grew up hooked on science fiction, "star

trek," as we talked about before, had those dreams and you get a chance to live those dreams is tremendous. >> any unforeseen circumstances, factors that you did not account for? >> happens all the time. that's why we call it exploration. if we always knew what we were going to find, we wouldn't have to go. great example is with the rover opportunity was kind of landed in a very flat place on mars, like a big parking lot with speed bumps in it. we were trying to drive south. we were driving over speed bumps. one day instead of the rover driving over the speed bump it was into the speed bump. it was softer and we had to spend weeks carefully crafting a plan to get the rover out. >> explain that sort of -- again, i'm going to go back to my first question. the whole world is counting on you. out the data back and it says you got the rover stuck. the feeling that would go down

my spine would be sick to my stomach. >> i didn't have that particular one. that wasn't me. i swear to god i'm not kidding about this, it was some other poor guy's first day. i've had those moments myself. i've coin and seen a big rover killing rock a few centimeters off the wing. oh, my god, your heart stops. it's terrible. all these people -- in part, all these people have put all this time and effort into making this mission happen. you don't want to let your team down. in addition people watching over your shoulder being back seat rover drivers. >> how early were you in the process? did you see rover loaded and touch the vehicle on the way up. >> i saw the rovers being built. i was part of a team that did mars exploration rovers.

>> proxy. >> that's exactly right. >> when you looked at the pictures, got the data, were communicating, did you feel like you were there? >> very much so. that's part of the interesting thing about the job. humans have this ability to put themselves in the mind of other people. had a first car, you gave it a name and invested it with a personality. that's kind of what we do with rovers. they are people to us. you put yourself in the mind of that rover, seen through eyes and moving with its body. i used to teach people to drive rovers. you can see this moment they would kind of go over this hump where as they were talking about what we want to do, they would tart moving their arm and body in ways we're talking about the rover. >> mars, glorious place you can't wait to visit personally or god forsaken place you can't wait to get off there. >> i would love to go there. even if i could never come back,

i would love to go. that would be tremendous. if nothing else, i have a couple of robot friends there. you mentioned ray bradbury i taught him how to drive a mars rover. during the anniversary celebration he came out to talk. we wheeled him up, he was in a wheelchair, wheeled him up, showed him how to use the software and showed him as bit of mars. >> you did a great job, the rovers had twitter accounts. when it blasted lasers into a rock, the rock had a twitter account. played happy birthday to itself. first time any music played on another planet. i think the astronauts of the 1960s would have rolled their eyes and said these are stunts. but the public ate it up. >> you kind of get that picture. when you learn more about the

astronauts you find they were fun loving guys. i personally think is wonderful we're able to engage people in this way. >> i think it made a huge difference in nasa's budget but i've been reading the twitter account. >> when i was growing up you would see the missions on the news but then disappear off the front page. this way you can stay connected. the ladies are funny, engaging, interesting, channel all that out through the rover twitter account. they make it a fun, engaining way. >> thousands of followers. >> scott maxwell, have you a book, "mars rover driver, coolest job ever." thank you for being with us. i wish we could talk further. >> thank you guys. >> "press: here" will be back in just a minute.

>> marsandme. find him on twitter at mars rover driver. congratulations to "press: here" contributor moving from his current position, a cushy columnist job at the "wall street journal." we'll have him back and ask him about that. i'm scott mcgrew. thank you for making us part of your sunday morning.

hello and welcome to comunidad del valle. i'm damian trujillo. and coming to the help of guadalupe church again today on your comunidad del valle. we begin with walks to end alzheimer's. with me on comunidad del valle, esther with alzheimer's association and michelle cordova, her family provided care for a loved one. welcome to the show. >> thank you. >> tell us, michelle, first about your family