MIT

A new technology promises to give users an estimated lens prescription in 10 seconds.

The new Hacking Medicine Institute, a nonprofit that spun out of MIT this past summer, is launching the latest initiative to produce reviews of mobile health apps and digital health tools.

What if wearables like Fitbits and the Apple Watch represent the infancy of on-body health sensors, something we'll one day look back on the way we now look at the clunky, boxy mobile phones of the 1980s? A number of researchers are working on ultrathin, flexible sensors that could be applied to the skin like smart tattoos, or even applied to the surface of organs inside the body to continually monitor vital signs or to deliver time-released drugs.

Pictured above: A device from Cambridge-based MC10, a company focused on flexible electronics.

As his time in office draws to a close, President Obama secured his reputation as our first geek president by hosting a tech startup demo day in the White House last week.

Participants in MIT's 2014 Hackathon with MGH and Samsung.

Andrew Conrad, the Google X researcher heading up the company's recently-announced ingestible-wearable sensor platform, has shared a good deal more information about the project in an interview with BackChannel.