Non-contact portable infrared thermometer for rapid influenza screening

Improvements in transportation technology combined with the growth and human population mobility have brought spreading rate of infectious diseases to new level. Fever is most common indicator for many infectious diseases-particularly influenza- and can be easily screened using infrared thermography. However, most of thermography systems are expensive and non-portable. In worse case, pandemic flu outbreak in densely populated area will probably cause long queue of infected persons in crisis centre. To address those issues, we designed a non-contact portable infrared thermometer for fever screening in clinical settings. The device is also equipped with intuitive means to input symptoms associated with pandemic flu. The body temperature reading and list of symptoms is printed in ticket - size summary. Each suspect will carry this summary when seeing doctor for further examination. Inter - device testing under simulated clinical conditions and statistical analysis on temperature measurement between 35 to 38 °C indicates that overall bias and precision was 0.2 °C and ±0.4 °C respectively. A single complete process may be finished in around one minute.