The appearance of body fever is usually a clear indication that a person is sick, and despite the fact that the mercury thermometer is widely used in Europe, since 2009 it has ceased to be marketed in favor of digital thermometers and infrared. NOW, The mobile could be the next device to precisely measure the temperature thanks to an application.
Despite the fact that some connected watches, such as the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 or the Apple Watch Ultra, have a specific sensor to measure the temperature, this is not used to offer data about it. A team from the University of Washington has developed an app so that many smartphones can do the same. And without the need for an external device, it uses a component that virtually all smartphones have.
It is a method capable of measure body temperature in about 90 seconds, and for this, it would be necessary to hold the smartphone against the forehead. Its margin of error is quite small, so it could even be used as a medical device, although it is not clear if this software could receive this certification.
mobile in the thermometer
Measuring body temperature may seem simple, but the truth is that even smartwatch manufacturers that offer this feature make it clear that the results are not specific enough as a professional device. In these devices, many of which specialize in collecting health data, temperature is used in addition to other data such as sleep.
However, the University of Washington research team has developed an app called FeverPhone that has a high level of accuracy. The most interesting thing is that to measure the temperature uses a sensor already present on many current smartphones. Its name is thermistor, and it is a resistor whose resistance depends on temperature changes. Generally, It is used to detect excessive heat in components such as the battery or processor.
FeverPhone creator using the app.
The way to do this, through the FeverPhone app, would be to hold the phone in your hand and press it against your forehead for about a minute and a half. To develop their application, they used hot water bottles with different smartphones equipped with this component. The phones were of different brands and there were some that had a screensaver and some that didn’t. Once the mobiles displayed their temperature data in reference to these bags, all of this data was compared to the actual measurements and fed into a machine learning model.
With this, very high accuracy could have been achieved, with a margin of error of only 0.23 degrees Celsius. This, as explained by Joseph Breda, creator of the application, could be acceptable to be considered a medical device. However, this depends on the United States Food and Drug Administration, as well as equivalent bodies in each country.
awaiting certification
The app passed a series of clinical trials in the emergency room of the University School of Medicine and showed reliability similar to that of an oral thermometer. However, it is possible that this application will never receive approval as a medical device, because, after all, every mobile, due to its construction or its internal temperature, could give different results under certain specific conditions.
Honor launched the Honor 4 Play in 2020, a smartphone that stood out for having a sensor to read the temperature. It worked by infrared, so it was enough to aim directly at the forehead of the user who wanted to measure. However, there is not much information about the margin of error it offered, and the company no longer included this sensor in its phones.
Joseph Breda, creator of the application.
Some smartwatches have a temperature sensor, but this is used to supplement other measurements or predictions they offer, because even in the case of the most premium, they are not able to come close enough to the precision required to be a medical device.
The same thing happens with the oximeter and with other health measurement sensors in this type of device. offer indicative but not professional results. This is clarified by brands such as Apple or Samsung in the information section of their watches.
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