Designed and manufactured in New Zealand, The Te Kahu Ora thermal screening system detects people with fevers automatically.
This was designed in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. It offers essential and general workplaces a tool to easily screen staff, patients and customers, identifying any that may have an elevated body temperature, indicating a fever.
It is fast and non-intrusive, without the need for close contact with the person being screened.
The camera output, including temperature reading, can be displayed on the screen of any compatible WiFi connected device. This includes the estimated body temperature, with a simple green background indicating normal, and red for elevated.
The camera includes a large display and an integrated thermal reference which improves the accuracy and robustness of the body temperature measurements. The thermal reference is a small box that sits about 50cm in front of the camera and contains a metal plate that heats up to a known temperature. The camera uses this to continuously calibrate.
The system itself does not collect personal information. The measured temperatures are logged to the cloud providing a record for health and safety reporting. These are be available via a portal and can be be downloaded to a spreadsheet. You can also set up alerts to be notified in real time when someone is detected with a high temperature.
Optional tracking of individuals' temperatures.
The camera has a mode where the person whose temperature is being measured has the option of scanning a QR code to link the temperature to them. You can assign each person a QR code via the Te Kahu Ora portal.
This helps with compliance tracking - you can check that each person who should have scanned has. It also helps with detecting a temperature because you can see if a person's temperature is higher than what is normal for them.
Each person can see their own personal temperature history on the webpage that contains their QR code. This page can be saved as an app for easy access.
"Very positive feedback from staff RE having temps taken by the paramedic and now your machine. This gives reassurance" - Inspector Kieren Kortegast, Centre Manager, Southern Communications Centre, New Zealand Police
The Te Kahu Ora is currently being used by various institutions including:
-
rest homes - read more detail about thermal screening in aged care facilities
- hotels
- food manufacturing facilities
Warning: Not all infectious people have a fever and so this must be used in conjunction with other health and safety practices to minimise the spread of COVID-19.
The camera comes with either a tripod or a wall mount. There is a $49 (ex GST) monthly fee for software updates, online reporting and support.
The camera is manufactured in New Zealand and the development of the camera is being supported by the New Zealand government through a grant from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment's COVID-19 Innovation Acceleration Fund. The Te Kahu Ora thermal camera design is open source and the detailed design documentation can be found here.
The camera software can be updated remotely and you should expect to see updates from time to time.
You can find the manual for the camera here. Check out the latest news about the thermal camera for detecting elevated body temperatures. Check out our videos about the Te Kahu Ora camera
The camera was developed by The Cacophony Project with the help of Callaghan Innovation, the MedTech CoRE and clever people across New Zealand. It is a re-purposed version of the thermal camera for predator detection. The camera is manufactured and supported by 2040 Limited which has been manufacturing thermal cameras for predator detection.
