On A Mission To Detect The Flu And Other Infectious Diseases With A Thermometer

Inder Singh couldn’t shake off a temperature of 103.8 degrees for one week during the summer of 2011. His doctor, an infectious disease specialist, was stumped. Desperate, Singh searched online for possible signs of a contagious illness in his New York area. There were none. Singh had worked in places like Uganda, Kenya, and India, haggling over the price of AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis drugs with pharmaceutical companies, as an executive with the Clinton Health Access Initiative. “I thought, ‘wouldn’t it be great to know what’s going around?’” he says. The most recent flu reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are for the week ending November 29. Google Flu Trends are based on searches which sometimes overestimate the number of doctor visits. Electronic health records vendor athenahealth can track the flu almost in real time, based on claims. When the CDC was reporting low levels of flu activity in mid-November, athenahealth was already showing a worrisome uptick in flu diagnoses the week before Thanksgiving, despite high vaccination rates. Weeks later, public health officials announce the cause is a different strain of the flu virus.   Singh wants to be timelier. His two-year-old start-up Kinsa is pairing the low-tech thermometer with a smartphone. On its own, it is a useful, engaging consumer product, which retails for $30 at Apple, Amazon, and CVS pharmacies, and is cleared by the FDA. Its customers...
Source: Forbes.com Healthcare News - Category: Pharmaceuticals Authors: Source Type: news