A study presented at the 2018 Society of Critical Care Medicine conference has shown that TempTraq, a patented, wearable, Bluetooth continuous body temperature monitor, is in agreement with Pulmonary Artery Catheters (PAC) temperature measurement.
The PAC is an invasive form of body temperature monitoring; however, TempTraq is a small, non-invasive patch placed on the underarm skin of patients to continuously measure axillary body temperature for up to 72 hours.
During the study at Cleveland Clinic, paired temperature measurements for both monitoring methods were taken simultaneously every two hours for an eight-hour period on 60 patients in two Intensive Care Units (ICU). In analysis, TempTraq measurements were in agreement with PAC temperature measurements (± 0.3 ° Celsius) and the precision of the two methods were not significantly different.
“The advantage of continuous temperature readings is that temperature trends can be monitored. If you can trend body temperature, there may be earlier detection of fever and an earlier initiation of therapy,” said Sandra Siedlecki, PhD, RN, CNS, senior nurse scientist in Cleveland Clinic’s Office of Nursing Research and Innovation and the lead author of the study.
Although not tested in this study, through TempTraq Connect, a secure, HIPAA-compliant service supported by the Google Healthcare Cloud Platform, the device can be integrated directly into hospital central monitoring system and electronic health records (EHR) to safely and securely store patient data. Health care providers can then view the temperature in their system as frequently as needed and can receive real-time audible or visual temperature change alerts at the patient bedside and/or through the central nursing station.
The TempTraq system is scalable and can support a single hospital or a multi-hospital/physician group health care system.
Results of the study were presented at the 2018 Society of Critical Care Medicine conference in San Antonio, Texas, and the abstract was published in Critical Care Medicine. For more information on TempTraq, visit www.TempTraq.com.