Lessons Learned From FeverPhone: Towards Scalable, Accessible At-Home Diagnostics via Fever Detection on Unmodified Smartphones

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Joseph Breda, Mastafa Springston, Alex Mariakakis, Shwetak N. Patel

Published: 01 Jan 2025, Last Modified: 12 Nov 2025GetMobile Mob. Comput. Commun. 2025EveryoneRevisionsBibTeXCC BY-SA 4.0
Abstract: When people start to feel the symptoms of a cold or the flu, one of the first things they do is check their temperature using either the back of their hand or a thermometer to determine if they have a fever, as an elevated body temperature can be an early indicator of illness. While consumer-grade thermometers are fairly ubiquitous, they are not always around when we need them. In a project we call FeverPhone, our goal was to develop an accessible alternative for cases when traditional thermometers are not readily available. This includes scenarios such as telehealth consultations and resource-constrained environments.