In the midst of the pandemic, we learned to give proper importance to fever as a non-negligible symptom. At times during the Covid-19 emergency, we also struggled to find accurate and reliable thermometers. But now a group of researchers from the University of Washington has come up with a system that allows you to have a valid thermometer available at all times.
That is, they have created an app called FeverPhone, which turns your smartphone into a thermometer without the need to add new hardware. The app allows the phone’s touchscreen and existing battery temperature sensors to be used to collect data that a machine learning model uses to estimate a person’s internal body temperature.
When researchers tested FeverPhone on 37 patients in an emergency room, the app estimated internal body temperature with an accuracy comparable to some thermometers already in use. Details of the new app and its testing were published in the journal Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies.
