Fever Smart: A wearable patch to continuously track body temperature
Wharton students develop wireless, app-enabled smart thermometer that keeps a close watch on a child's fever no matter where parents are.
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AARON GOLDSTEIN, 20, and Collin Hill, 21, of University City, are co-founders of Fever Smart, which makes a smart, wireless, app-enabled thermometer that sends alerts if a child gets a fever. The two are juniors at Penn's Wharton School. Goldstein is a finalist for Entrepreneur magazine's College Entrepreneur of 2014.
Q: How'd you come up with the idea for Fever Smart?
A: Collin was diagnosed at 19 with [blood cancer], had chemotherapy and his immune system was suppressed. He was prone to infection and his temperature would rise. He was frustrated that he couldn't continuously monitor or be alerted when it rose. He approached me and we began this in February 2013.
Q: Startup money?
A: We bootstrapped. We're in the Wharton Venture Initiation Program and also got $50,000 from Digital Health Accelerator at the Science Center.
Q: What's the biz do?
A: It's real-time temperature-monitoring, allowing parents to remotely and continuously track a child's temperature. Rather than going under your tongue, the device sticks to a smart patch under your armpit. Temperature data are relayed via Bluetooth to a smartphone, and the data are uploaded to the cloud for parents to see on an app wherever they are.
Q: The biz model?
A: We're launching a 30-day crowdfunding campaign on Sept. 17 to raise $50,000, and we'll be preselling the devices. In the future, we believe we'll have a subscription model with add-on features. All who back us on Indiegogo will be grandfathered in and never pay a subscription. The early-bird special is $119; we'll probably retail Fever Smart for $199.
Q: Why a name change?
A: We began as Life Patch, but walk into a drugstore and see that next to a thermometer and it doesn't immediately click what it does. Fever Smart indicates something to do with temperature and a smartphone.
Q: Potential customers?
A: Parents of young children at risk for undetected fevers and dangerous temperature spikes. We're working with some large health-care conglomerates in China that could use this as a continuous vital-signs monitoring system.
Q: Competitors?
A: Kinsa Health has a thermometer that plugs into a phone. It's basically a smart, conventional thermometer because you have to plug it in, be near a child and it's a onetime reading.
Q: How big a biz is this?
A: We have four co-founders, including my sister Becca and CTO William Duckworth.
Q: What's next?
A: After the Indiegogo campaign, the first batch of Fever Smarts will be manufactured and shipped by year's end. Then we get customer feedback.
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