And tracks sickness as it moves around your community.
Fever—there’s an app for that. From the company Kinsa, which unveiled the world’s first smart thermometer in 2014, comes an even smarter product: A wireless ear thermometer that will track users’ temperatures via phone application, and tell them when to get outside help.
The new feature, called “Guidance,” uses a patient’s medical history—including temperature and symptoms—to recommend next steps, like a doctor’s visit.
In that case, the medical history saved by the thermometer be easily transferred to a professional via the web.
“When your child is sick, you don’t really care about the difference between a 102 degree fever and a 102.5 degree temperature,” Kinsa cofounder Inder Singh told TechCrunch. “All you care about is how to make them feel better, and Guidance is a huge step toward providing that assurance.
The information uploaded to the Kinsa application will also be anonymously tracked and aggregated, so that families can better understand when and how sickness is moving throughout their communities.
The smart thermometer could have important public health functions, too. During a 2014 study, researchers discovered that Kinsa users in the Dallas area began to use their thermometers more frequently once reports of a local Ebola case emerged in the news. The study’s scientists hope their work will prompt researchers to use Kinsa data to study the movement of infectious diseases during outbreaks.
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