DEM's Dr. Mastafa Springston Co-Author on Study that Uses App to Detect Fever

UW NEWS- Dr. Mastafa Springston is a co-author on a study that aimed to find an alternative to a thermometer, since many people may not have access to one. The research team then developed an app for smartphones that can help detect a fever.

The app is called FeverPhone, and turns smartphones into thermometers by using the phone’s touchscreen and repurposes the existing battery temperature sensors to gather data that a machine learning model uses to estimate people’s core body temperatures.

“People come to the ER all the time saying, ‘I think I was running a fever.’ And that’s very different than saying ‘I was running a fever,’” said Springston, a UW clinical instructor at the Department of Emergency Medicine in the UW School of Medicine. “In a wave of influenza, for instance, people running to the ER can take five days, or even a week sometimes. So if people were to share fever results with public health agencies through the app, similar to how we signed up for COVID exposure warnings, this earlier sign could help us intervene much sooner.”

Read the full article from UW News here.