MIT Solve

Solution & Team Overview

Solution name:

FeverGuard

Short solution summary:

FeverGuard is a small, wearable thermometer that fits comfortably on the upper arm. It provides an early warning of a potential fever, one of the most common signs of an infection.

In what city, town, or region is your solution team based?

Pleasanton, CA, USA

Who is the Team Lead for your solution?

Mark Lewis, technology executive and CEO with over 30 years of industry experience. Accomplished leader that has grown several new businesses to more than $250M and managed several multi-billion-dollar divisions.

Which Challenge Area does your solution most closely address?

Identify (Determine & limit the disease risk pool & spill over risk), such as: Genomic data to predict emerging risk, Early warning through ecological, behavioural & other data, Intervention/Incentives to reduce risk for emergency & spill over

What specific problem are you solving?

Fever is one of the most common symptoms of a viral or bacterial infection yet (until FeverGuard) there was no easy way to monitor individuals for the first sign of a fever. Several challenges needed to be overcome.

First, we needed to create a comfortable wearable solution that could continuously monitor body temperature. The FeverGuard team has tested several methods of taking temperature measurements as close to the ideal core body locations as possible. Axillary measurement offers the most consistently accurate results. Many Bluetooth temperature devices worn on the wrist provide poor, inaccurate, and inconsistent temperature measurements compared to core temperatures. We built a simple small bluetooth device the attaches to the upper arm for this purpose.

Our research also showed that each individual's "normal" temperature could vary by as much as 4 degrees and that an individual's temperature could also vary by up to 3 degrees throughout the day (circadian rhythm). To rapidly detect the onset of a fever we needed a solution the could rapidly "learn" an individual's temperature pattern so that we could focus on anomaly detection so the we could alert the user at the first sign of an elevated temperature.

Simply put, what might be a normal temperature for one person might be an abnormally high temperature for another person.

Using our solution all individuals will be able to monitor themselves for the first sign of a fever. This will reduce the spread of a virus and allow for faster time to treatment.

Who does your solution serve, and what needs of theirs does it address?

While FeverGuard can be used by anyone, our focus is on the essential workforce during a pandemic.

Members of the essential workforce, comprising 62 million primarily women and underrepresented minorities (URMs), face a stark choice: keep working or lose their jobs.

Many jobs require close physical proximity to others and frequent face-to-face interactions that increase potential disease exposure. Physical distancing is an unattainable luxury. Essential workers expose themselves and their families to the COVID virus every day. For them, the economy never closed.

So, essential workers live in fear as they struggle with mental and physical health problems caused by constant stress, frequently exacerbated by sleep disorders.

Much of our development testing has been done with police, fire and healthcare professionals.

Feverguard has applicability in any situation where individuals are at risk for contracting a virus and spreading it to others.

What is your solution’s stage of development?

Growth: An initiative, venture, or organisation with an established product, service, or business/policy model rolled out in one or, ideally, several contexts or communities, which is poised for further growth