Feverprints is a mobile app built on Apple HealthKit & ResearchKit to crowdsource the collection of fever data to help physicians better understand how to use fever as a tool to improve medical diagnoses.
Project Overview
Feverprints is an iOS native application, built using Apple’s HealthKit and ResearchKit, that seeks to leverage modern technology to recruit thousands of children and adults from across the United States for the largest research study of body temperatures ever created. By collecting crowdsourced data from patients’ phones, the study aims to understand how body temperatures differ between individuals of different backgrounds, ages, and sizes, in order to redefine what “normal” and “febrile” temperatures are. The study also hopes to identify specific fever patterns (“feverprints”) for different illnesses that will allow doctors to make quicker and more accurate diagnoses. Finally, the study will determine the effect of antipyretics (medicines to decrease fever) on the severity and length of an illness
Healthcare Context
Fever is one of the most common signs of illness, and its presence causes anxiety to many. Surprisingly, 160 years after temperature became a “vital sign” taken at every medical encounter, we still know very little about fever. Better understandings of how body temperature varies between individuals and identification of disease fever patterns could allow doctors to make faster, more accurate diagnoses.
In the News
- At what temperature do you really have a fever?
- Boston Children’s second ResearchKit study aims to better understand fever
- Fever, revisited: ResearchKit app will tap crowd-sourced temperature data
- Use Feverprints to better understand your body temperature
- Boston Children’s launches Apple ResearchKit-based Feverprints app
- Researches at Boston Children’s to study Body Temperature
- New ResearchKit app uses crowdsourced body temperature to shape future of medicine
- Boston Children’s launches Feverprints ResearchKit study
- Feverprints app: Using ResearchKit to better understand body temperature