Boston Children’s Hospital is becoming a regular when it comes to developing mobile apps on Apple’s ResearchKit platform. Tuesday, the hospital debuted Feverprints, an app and study that’s trying to gain insight into a common but oft-neglected condition: fevers.
Researchers will try to get data from tens of thousands of users — children and adults — by making the iOS app a free download. As the app name suggests, they will attempt to understand the “print” of a fever, including the progression of the ailment.
“There are two different questions we are trying to address,” said Jared Hawkins, director of informatics at the hospital’s Innovation and Digital Health Accelerator and the Autoinflammatory Diseases Clinic.
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In addition to the fever print, the Boston Children’s researchers will be looking for signs of what might be “normal” in a fever, Hawkins said. For example, are certain characteristics more prevalent at different times of day or the year? Do age, gender or demographics matter when studying fevers?
“We’re not going to change the definition of a fever,” Hawkins said. That is set at 38 degrees Celsius (100.4 degrees Fahrenheit). Nor does he expect to be able to make diagnoses from fever prints.
But there is plenty to be learned. Are there different fever prints for different types of people? Can a fever indicate the presence of other diseases?
In this study, Boston Children’s will be leveraging the consumer-facing Apple HealthKit platform. Feverprint will be able to pull in data from smart thermometers, including wearables, Hawkins said.
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However, Hawkins expects most participants to enter readings manually from traditional, analog thermometers. Data won’t be as comprehensive from these sources, but that is fine. “Even getting a single data point a day or a week is useful,” Hawkins said.
Participants also are being asked to answer questions about fever symptoms and medications. Hawkins said that Feverprint has been designed so that each interaction takes less than 60 seconds.
This is not the hospital’s first experience building a ResearchKit app. Boston Children’s already is running a hepatitis C study on the Apple platform.
Photo: Boston Children’s Hospital/iTunes
