A few years ago I wrote about the Kinsa Smart Thermometer, which attempted to take a humble thermometer and make it social. The ideas was that not only can you see the temperature on your own device, but you can also share (and learn) that temperature within your community.

It could, therefore, provide a helpful guide to spotting potential illness in your community. That’s the theory anyway.

The folks at Kinsa haven’t rested on their laurels in the meantime, and have recently released another new product. Their latest take on smart, social temperature taking is the baby-friendly Kinsa Smart Ear Thermometer, which is an ear thermometer that not only shares the results, but also has an AI engine in built to provide recommendations based upon the reading.

Smart thermometers

The device, which is currently raising funds on IndieGoGo, comes with an accompanying app that offers advice to the user based upon their temperature.

Alas, this advice is largely where the device falls down, because it is currently setup for the American market, so the advice it offers is not consistent with that recommended by health bodies elsewhere in the world.

It’s undoubtedly a nice design, and offers good functionality, but as a pure consumer device, it will be crucial that the advice it offers is consistent with the region the device is being used in.

If that isn’t the case then it may still have uses in trained hands, for instance in allowing doctors surgeries, community health staff, school nurses and so on to ‘socialize’ and share the readings they have and thus build up a map of the health of their communities.

It probably won’t gain much traction in the consumer market however, especially when placed up against potential big brand rivals that aren’t running against the grain of existing healthcare providers.

So an interesting device but more work needed I think. Check out the video below for more on the product.