COLLIERVILLE, Tenn. — As cases of child respiratory illness climb in Shelby County, an elementary school in Collierville is one of several across the state using smart thermometers paired with an app to track symptoms and illness trends to help stop the spread of sickness early.
When kids wake up sick, most parents first question is: ‘How bad is it?’
“Are we going to take him to the doctor? Can he stay home? Or you know what, I think we can just wait and see,” says Andrea Garcia, a parent of students at Schilling Farms Elementary School.
Followed by: ‘Is it contagious?’
Schilling Farms Elementary is using the thermometers and app as part of kinsa’s FLUency school health program to answer those questions.
“If you are feeling like your student is ill or not feeling well, you take ystudent'sents temperature and it automatically lets you upload information about signs and symptoms that your student might be having,” said school nurse Candace Marshall.
The app shows which symptoms are showing up and in which grade or classroom, without identifying individual students.
“(We can) see if there's any other sicknesses or illnesses going around,” Garcia said. “I noticed that one of the students had an ear infection last week. I also noticed that for my oldest son, there hasn't been anybody sick (around him).”
With one son in kindergarten and the other in the 4th grade, Garcia said the app lets her keep track of each of them individually.
“So you can go to each profile and see which child has been around what children,” she said. “It's completely anonymous. So it just tells you the symptoms that have been around.”
Staff at Schilling Farms Elementary say they’ve given out around 200 thermometers since 2020. With a population of about 600, the school says the program is continuing to grow with more and more thermometers being sent out to homes.
Marshall said they started using the thermometers because of COVID-19 but says they are still vital during flu season.
“If you, as a school nurse, know that, ‘Hey, I have a certain population or certain group of kids in the same area of the building that are having the same symptoms, then that can trigger us to let us know that we might have something going on,” she said.