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November 12, 2013

Big Data Thermometer to Enable Health Weather Reports

“Just imagine what we could do if we knew where illness was spreading in our local community before it affected our friends and family,” challenges Inder Singh, CEO of Kinsa, creators of a new kind of thermometer that leverages mobile connectivity and big data to deliver insights on family and community health.

Seeing the Kinsa Smart Thermometer for the first time is kind of a forehead slapping moment as you witness the simplistic brilliance of it and consider its implications. With its sleek blue design, the unit is a thermometer with an oral sensor on one end, and 3.5mm jack on the other end – perfect for plugging into the audio port of virtually any smart phone. And that’s when the modern day magic begins.

When plugged in and connected to the Kinsa mobile smartphone app, the thermometer goes from being a simple thermometer, to being a virtual nurse in the pocket helping to diagnose illness. Using the thermometer, the individual’s temperature is taken. Once determined, the app asks the user about common symptoms that they might be feeling (Do they have the chills; Fatigue; A cough; etc.?). These symptoms can be saved to individual profiles on the phone that can be tracked over time, giving the user a record that they can share with their doctor.

Kinsa doesn’t stop there. Through the power of social media, the app can connect with other Kinsa users. In a demonstration at the NY Tech Meetup last month, Singh showed a group representing a first grade class, with a report that displayed such things as risk level for that group, recent sick reports, and what bugs have been going around within the group. Like a social network, it’s all opt-in.

For those that choose not to join a private group, they can access the macro data collected, which is overlaid on a map within the app. Back within the virtual walls of Kinsa, data collected from the units in the field is blended with other existing medical data that Kinsa is collecting to help create a more accurate picture of the health for the region. Using this macro perspective, Singh says that Kinsa is creating a virtual “Health Weather Report” that can be accessed through the app which shows what is going around, the general health of the region, and the contagiousness levels for the area.

 “I am incredibly excited about what we are doing at Kinsa,” says Singh in a statement released earlier this year. “Imagine what we could do if we could detect the spread of illnesses in real-time. The data that one person provides could be the key in detecting the spread of flu or any number of other worse contagious illnesses, and lead to interventions that save lives.”

Earlier this year the company participated in a crowd funding round on indiegogo, raising just over $50k, a move that was done more for the buzz generation than actual need of money. The company is otherwise backed by IA Ventures, which led a $2 million seed round in Q3 of 2012, and is now getting ready to push its big data thermometers into the market.

The units are expected to start being delivered to indiegogo participants in a soft launch in November and December of this year, and widely available at the beginning of 2014 at a price range of between $15 and $20.

 

Related items:

Healthcare Struggling to Realize Big Data ROI 

New Initiative Aims to Expand Watson’s Reach 

Big Data to Give Clinical Trials a Big Boost 

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