Not quite beam me up, but Star Trek technology's moved beyond science fiction

In a distant part of the galaxy, 300 years in the future, starship Enterprise Captain James T.Kirk talks to his crew via a communicator; has his medical officer assess medical conditions through a handheld device called a tricorder; synthesises food and physical goods using his replicator; and travels short distances via a transporter. Kirk's successors hold meetings in virtual-reality chambers, called holodecks, and operate alien spacecraft using displays mounted on their foreheads. All this takes place in the TV series Star Trek, and is of course science fiction.

This science fiction is, however, becoming science reality. Many of the technologies that we saw in Star Trek are beginning to materialise, and ours may be better than Starfleet's. Best of all, we won't have to wait 300 years.

Take Captain Kirk's communicator. It was surely an inspiration for the first generation of flip phones, those clunky mobile devices of the 1990s. These have evolved into smartphones, far more advanced than the science-fiction communicator. Kirk's device didn't receive e-mails, play music, surf the web, or take photos, after all. It also didn't sweet-talk him as Apple's Siri does when you ask her the right questions.

Soon, our smartphones will also add the medical-assessment features of a tricorder, and it won't need to be a separate device.

Apple recently announced that iOS 8 will provide a platform for medical-sensor data that will be displayed by an application called Health. Google, Microsoft, Samsung and others are all racing to build their own platforms and medical devices.

We will soon see a new generation of wearable devices such as bracelets, watches and clothing that use external sensors to perform electrocardiograms and measure our temperature, blood oxygenation and other vital signs. These will later be replaced by less obtrusive sensors in skin patches, tattoos and eventually microchips embedded in our bodies.