Evaluating Accuracy of Digital Thermometers Using a Tissue Phantom Mimicking Normal and Fever Environments¹

Body temperature monitoring is an important tool for helping clinicians diagnose infections, detect fever, monitor thermoregulation functions during surgical procedures, and assess postsurgery recovery. Commercially available (“store brand”) fast read thermometers have been developed to predict body core temperatures based on the first few seconds of temperature recordings either orally or under the arm. Our recent clinical study [1] demonstrated temperature variations from one body site to another and their deviations from the true body core temperature. Our study was the first where temperature transients were recorded in a clinical setting by a fast responding reference thermometer—based on a thermistor bead sensor—at two body sites. It is also the first time the reference thermometer was placed simultaneously with a store brand digital thermometer to evaluate the digital thermometer's algorithm-based temperature predictions. There was a large temperature measurement variation between the reference and store brand thermometers during the initial...