Hospitals addressing the COVID-19 pandemic are worried about being short on ventilators, personal protective equipment, and appropriate bed space. However, the biggest hurdle may be having enough staff to monitor large numbers of patients. To help address this matter, Aranet, a company that normally makes environmental monitoring solutions for industrial applications, is releasing a large-scale body temperature monitoring system that can allow a hospital to keep track of dozens of people at the same time. The technology may help to reduce the number of in-person visits that a patient receives, helping to reduce staff workload and limit exposure, but to also improve how closely patients are monitored for any changes in their condition. Each thermometer, inserted into the rear end, is battery powered and transmits its readings every minute to a base station. Each station comes with 100 of these thermometers which never need to be calibrated. Information on all the patients can be viewed on a desktop, tablet, or smartphone, and alarms can be set up to make sure that more acute patients are not missed. Aranet says the system is easy to roll out quickly and the wireless technology it uses needs only a single base station at a clinic to communicate at a distance and through walls. Some of the features of the new system, according to Aranet: 1. Simple and quick set-up – saving time when every moment counts 2. Exceptionally long-range radio – allowing to cover large areas of the hospital up to several hundreds of meters 3. 24/7 monitoring – providing detailed, easily-accessible history of each patient’s temperature 4. Customizable alarms – allowing medical staff to prioritize patients who need immediate care 5. Redundancy – built-in local memory within the PRO base station guarantees continuous data collection even if the internet connection goes down or is not available 6. Data agglomeration – allowing centralised data collection through Aranet Cloud from all base stations in use for a complete overview of the situation within the hospital 7. No field calibration necessary – sensors are factory calibrated for lifespan Here’s a promo video for the Aranet Medical Thermometer: Source