If you’ve ever had a fever, you know firsthand just how frenetic and unpredictable they can be. One minute you’re miserable at 99.4, and then suddenly you’re up at 104.9, just a few degrees away from a trip to the emergency room. And to make matters worse, you’ve got to hang out with a mercury-filled thermometer under your tongue in order to keep track of it.
This is exactly what happened to Colin Hill, inventor of the upcoming Fever Smart thermometer. About 18 months ago, when Hill was undergoing chemotherapy treatments, he had to take his own temperature every so often because he was more susceptible to infections. One night, after going to bed with a normal temperature, he awoke just a few hours later with a raging fever that took him to the ER. Even with regular periodic readings, he still didn’t see the spike coming.
After speaking with a few of his fellow students at the University of Pennsylvania about the experience, it dawned on Hill that there must be a better way to monitor your body temperature. When he and his colleagues discovered there wasn’t such a solution on the market already, they set out to build one themselves.
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Today, about a year and a half after hatching the idea, Hill and his co-conspirators are on the verge of launching Fever Smart — an intelligent, app-enabled thermometer designed to keep a constant, unbroken watch on your (or your child’s) temperature. Rather than going under your tongue, the device sticks to a secure adhesive patch placed under your armpit. Using Bluetooth, it then beams temperature data to a nearby device (tablet, smartphone, or laptop). If your fever begins to rise sharply or reach potentially dangerous levels, the app can send you push notifications to let you know.
In addition to being great for personal use, Fever Smart is a boon for parents of young children. With this device, parents would be able to monitor sick children at all times, no matter where they happen to be. All collected temperature data is relayed from the armpit beacon, to a connected device, and then to the cloud; so parents can stay informed even if they’re outside of Bluetooth range.
The device isn’t quite available for purchase, but Hill and his team reportedly plan to launch an Indiegogo campaign in the not-so-distant future to gather funds for production. We’ll keep you posted on a launch date, but in the meantime, you can find out more about the device here.
