A Novel Wearable Device for Continuous Temperature Monitoring & Fever Detection

oleh: Nishant Verma, Iman Haji-Abolhassani, Suhas Ganesh, Jesus Vera-Aguilera, Jonas Paludo, Roxana Heitz, Svetomir N. Markovic, Kimary Kulig, Atiyeh Ghoreyshi

Format: Article
Diterbitkan: IEEE 2021-01-01

Deskripsi

<italic>Objective:</italic> Continuous temperature monitoring in high-risk patients can enable healthcare providers to remotely track patients&#x2019; temperatures, promptly detect fevers and timely intervene to improve clinical outcomes. We evaluated if a novel wearable, continuous temperature monitor (Verily Patch) can reliably estimate body temperature and early detect fevers in an outpatient setting in patients at a high risk of febrile neutropenia (FN) who recently underwent chemotherapy and autologous stem cell transplantation (ASCT). <italic>Methods:</italic> 86 patients at a high risk for FN were prospectively enrolled at Mayo Clinic, MN. Patients wore the device in their axilla region for 7 days post ASCT and recorded self-measured oral temperatures every 3 hours. Patients were also followed using clinical standard-of-care procedures with daily oral temperature assessment. The clinic- and patient-assessed oral temperatures were used to develop and evaluate Verily Patch&#x2019;s body temperature and early fever detection algorithms using a K-fold cross-validation approach. <italic>Results:</italic> The Verily Patch reliably measured body temperatures with an error of 0.35 &#x00B1; 0.88&#x00B0;F in comparison to clinic- and patient-assessed oral temperatures. The sensitivity and specificity of the patch in detecting clinic-assessed fever episodes was 90.2&#x0025; and 87.8&#x0025;. The patch detected 14.3 times the number of clinic-assessed fever episodes with a median lead time of 4.3 hours. <italic>Conclusion:</italic> Patient self-monitoring of temperature and fever incidents suffers from low accuracy and is impractical for extended periods of time. Continuous temperature monitoring by a wearable device (such as Verily Patch) has the potential to overcome these challenges resulting in better patient clinical outcomes and more cost-effective care.