City announces innovative thermometer technology for monitoring community health

The City of St. Augustine, in collaboration with Kinsa, Inc., is developing a pilot project to provide real-time temperature data that will enable public health officials to monitor, predict, and respond to aggregated changes in fever data with the presence of the COVID-19 pandemic in the city.

Implementation of the pilot project plan includes the distribution of 600 thermometers to voluntary households, prioritizing households of first responders most likely in contact with the virus, large-member households, and family households in underserved communities which might delay seeking care and treatment.

The data collected and analyzed will serve to identify temperature spikes, which in turn would lead to data-driven testing, quarantine, and other health measures where most needed. The data will also facilitate target messaging to affected neighborhoods and the evaluation of the efficacy of municipal administrative orders aimed at controlling and combating the pandemic.

Historic City News was informed that the written project plan is a collaborative effort of John Regan, P.E. City Manager, City of St. Augustine; Inder Singh CEO & Founder, Kinsa and Former Executive Vice President of the Clinton Health Access Initiative; and Nirav R. Shah, MD, MPH, Senior Scholar, Stanford University and Former Commissioner, NYS Dept of Health.  The project is intended to be initiated by April 22, 2020.

Kinsa, a public health company dedicated to providing the knowledge, guidance, and tools for keeping communities healthy, has created an internet-connected thermometer that allows it to anonymously collect and aggregate fever data. Kinsa has distributed over 1 million thermometers in homes across America today.