Everyone knows that the coolest bits of technology are those that owe their development directly to Star Trek and this week the British Metro newspaper dedicated two pages to a variety of inventions straight from the decks of the USS Enterprise.

Amongst the laptops that roll up into poster tubes and mobile phone wrist watches I was particularly excited to see that the Department of Homeland Security has developed the first Medical Tricorder however I was disappointed to discover that they've chosen to give it the very unimaginative name of the Standoff Patient Triage Tool or SPTT.

Now, in the heat of battle or the chaos of a mass emergency, how easy is it going to be to refer to the SPTT by name? It's probably going to end up being called the SPIT and that's not really what you want to hear from a doctor when you're lying a pool of your own bodily fluids,

“Nurse, fetch the spit!”

C'mon DHS, be good sports, make us nerds and triage surgeons everywhere happy. Call it a tricorder. ;-)