Indian-origin professor turns smartphone into thermometer

New York: Scientists including an Indian-origin professor have turned a smartphone into a thermometer that uses 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.

The team led by researchers at the University of Washington (UW) created an app called FeverPhone, which



transforms smartphones into thermometers without adding new hardware.

Shwetak Patel, a UW professor in the Allen School and the electrical and computer engineering department, was a senior author on the paper.

When the researchers tested FeverPhone on 37 patients in an emergency department, the app estimated core body temperatures with accuracy comparable to some consumer thermometers.