New York City is participating in a pilot program that is looking into whether a smart thermometer could help predict when the city could experience the next outbreak from a virus. 

The company Kinsa provided 100,000 smart thermometers to the city at no charge to distribute to residents across the five boroughs.

What You Need To Know

  • The company that makes the smart thermometers, Kinsa, gave them to the city for free

  • Connected to an app, the thermometer reads temperatures and allows users to put in other symptoms

  • Kinsa and the city collect data in real-time, aggregating data by borough and neighborhood
  • Kinsa nor the city can see users' names or their addresses

Kinsa thermometers measure not only your temperature but, through its app, it aggregates every Kinsa thermometer’s temperature, measuring entire neighborhoods without using any individual’s name or address.  

The goal is to detect where viruses like COVID-19 or the flu could spread next by finding increases in possible symptoms, said Nita Nehru, Kinsa's vice president of communications. Users can manually enter into the app things like runny noses and coughs.

“If you know symptoms or something unusual is happening, you know where to be putting your resources to best use to understand what’s happening,” Nehru said.

Lynet Salcedo got one of the thermometers at the Boriken Neighborhood Health Center in East Harlem. She got COVID-19 during the omicron surge.

“Thank God I beat it and I was fine," she said, right after testing the thermometer for the first time.

She said she's excited to use it on her kids to keep track of their temperatures, in addition to helping the city get a better idea of the health of people in East Harlem. She said she trusts her data will stay anonymous. 

Nehru said Kinsa hopes this program proves that cities can curb viruses and prevent large scale outbreaks.

The city Health Department told NY1 in an email that it's still analyzing the data from Kinsa's thermometers and trying to figure that out.