RESOURCES
The Industry is a Mess: How Can We Help?
Beginning early in 2020, we became aware of more and more claims of unrealistic accuracy. Relying on our expertise in thermal imaging and physiology we could confidently state, without even seeing the system, that the various claims were unrealistic or even impossible. Other systems would seemingly incorporate "the right stuff" to meet the standards, but every system we were able to test, we would very quickly work out that each such system was substantially similar to a broken clock pointing near 98.6F. The only system we have examined to-date that does not behave in this way is the FLIR T540-EST (and the Fever Inspect), which was one of the systems we examined in the summer of 2021 and 2022. This even includes some FDA-approved devices you'll see in doctor's offices today.
Our sales efforts ended in 2021 and we shifted our focus, with what time we could spare, to fighting the causes of the COVID-19 fever screening fraud. Some of the causes are related to other frauds that occurred such as rapid antigen tests that didn't work. Others are fairly specific to the thermal imaging components industry and the (mostly) resellers who took advantage of the industry. But the biggest cause may be the glaring errors in the several international standards for non-contact thermometry and screening with thermography.
Note: we still support ongoing users who have come to believe in the Fever Inspect, thanks to its real ability to detect fevers and prevent employees and visitors from harming nursing home patients - on average, our systems detect approximately one real fever per ~3,000 scans, which is close to previously published baseline febrility rates in the general public (Taiwanese airport studies of 8M travelers during Dengue epidemic in 2008). Only a few of the fevers our systems detect were then confirmed to be related to a positive COVID-19 rapid antigen test. This calls into question the rationale for using screening for COVID specifically, but nonetheless most of the fevers detected are transmissible. We thank our nursing home partners for trusing the Fever Inspect to help keep people safe.
Please take a look at what we've done so far and our ongoing efforts to change this industry for the better.
See also our preprint in medRxiv.
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Archived Content Related to Fever Inspect Product
Fever Inspect: Brochure
Organizations are struggling to return to normalcy while mitigating the spread of COVID-19. Learn more about how the easy to use Fever Inspect automates COVID risk screening plus its highly accurate core body temperature screening, serving as an early warning system.
IEEE Spectrum Publication
IEEE Spectrum published "Infrared Fever Detectors Used for COVID-19 Aren’t As Accurate As You Think" by Erik Beall, Ph.D (December 2020). The article details the current accuracy issues of non-contact temperature screening systems, simple methods to test for accuracy, and capacities for providing a high degree of accuracy required for elevated body temperatures.
Full article is online at IEEE Spectrum with a pdf anyone can access here.
Publications
The development of the Fever Inspect led to several new scientific findings, which we are in the process of publishing. Find our recent SPIE Optics and Photonics papers and presentations here. In our Methods work, our founder shows, for the first time, what has been missing from non-contact thermometry and how to test systems that aren't so easy to test. Warning, it goes pretty deep.
Fever Inspect: User Manual
If you want more details after viewing our how-to setup videos, read through this user manual for all the details to get your new Fever Inspect set up and operating.
Whitepaper: Risk Reduction
Many devices out in the market today do not deliver on what they promise, which is to get an accurate core temperature of a subject. With Fever Inspect FIP-E, you can get a core temperature (up to a few degrees Celsius) of the person within seconds, making it the most accurate device on the market today. Read this whitepaper to learn more about how this accuracy can actually reduce risk, unlike the many devices on the market that don't deliver what they claim.
Whitepaper: ISO/IEC Standards
What should you be looking for, based on the ISO/IEC standards and thermal physics? This whitepaper lays out the science, what you should demand from your vendor and what your error budget is likely to look like
Live Test Demonstration
It is nearly impossible to tell the difference between temperature screening systems without an IR calibrator, so here we demonstrate our test protocol with a high-accuracy IR calibrator on two commonly available forehead IR scanners and our system. Bottom line, our system will accurately report temperatures from hypothermia to normal to mild, moderate, severe fever accurately, while the forehead IR scanners stay in a normal range the entire time.