This thermometer is so cool you’ll wish you had a fever

This may be news, but the hand-on-forehead method is not the best way to tell if someone has got a fever. But if you’re checking temperatures frequently – say, you’re a new parent – the hand trick is often a tempting alternative to cramming a plastic and metal tube under someone’s tongue, or zapping their forehead with something that looks like it was taken out of Star Trek.

To save us from this fever dilemma, the Hong Kong startup Flo aims to couple the accuracy of an infra-red thermometer with the casual ease of using a smartphone. And, if Kickstarter contributions are any indication, they’ve tapped into something big.

Keep it simple

The design philosophy of Flo, according to founder Eddie Cheung, was to make the device as simple and convenient as possible.

“‘Smart’ should mean more than just sharing data to your phone,” he says.

The Flo team had used other “smart” thermometers, but many were large, sciency devices that needed a smartphone to work at all. Flo, on the other hand, gives feedback with or without a phone, works wirelessly, and looks more like a colorful keychain than a medical tool.

Calling it a “digital” thermometer wouldn’t be right – there are, after all, no digits. To use, you simply point Flo at a child’s forehead, and a light on the device will shine red for fever, green for normal, or white for a bit too cold.

Users can then check more specific temperature info on their phones – or Apple Watches, if they’re the type – and can check the Flo app to see their child’s temperature over time.

Flo is aimed at people who need to take temperatures frequently. Eddie specifically notes new parents as well as the elderly and caregivers, but there’s nothing stopping a curious adult from tracking their temperatures as well.

A robust app

The Flo device may be a dead simple affair, but its app packs in quite a few features. Some are pretty intuitive – it keeps track of temperatures over time, has different user profiles for family members, and can read the temperature aloud – others may take a bit of getting used to.

“We also want to move beyond focusing just on the hardware aspect of Flo and help parents track and share body temperatures,” says Eddie. “This led to ‘timeline’ and photo tagging features that let parents add context to each data point with photos, notes, tags, and locations.”

A timeline of family photos based on when people had fevers, with options to share to social networks? That’s one optional feature that may not get too much use.

But others – like an “object mode” to test the temperature of a bottle of milk – could certainly be useful additions to a parent’s toolkit.

Kickstarted