Tracking the Illness

David Gal CdeP 2002 is the CTO and VP of Engineering at Kinsa, a public health technology company whose tools may offer public health officials a way to predict and prepare for the spread of Covid-19 even as testing remains limited in the U.S. 

The company’s internet-connected smart thermometer, which patients can use to monitor their own health and that Kinsa uses to track and predict the spread of infectious illness, especially annual outbreaks of the flu, provides real-time data about fever spikes in different geographic areas. When compared with Kinsa’s predictive models, this information may serve as an effective proxy indicator of Covid-19 spread, allowing communities to respond earlier and for public health officials to more effectively plan and prioritize testing. 

This data is now publicly available via Kinsa’s U.S. Health Weather Map, allowing public health officials and other professionals to identify and investigate areas where illness levels are unusually high, as well as gauge whether measures taken are working to slow the spread of the disease. It has recently been covered in The New York Times, The Rachel Maddow Show, and TechCrunch.

David, who has been instrumental in developing the company’s smart thermometer and the recently launched U.S. Health Weather Map, shared a bit about his experiences given the newfound urgency of his work.

I lead the technical and operations teams at Kinsa, which include hardware engineering (electrical, firmware, mechanical), software engineering (mobile apps, platform), data science, QA, customer support, supply chain operations, regulatory and compliance. I was directly responsible for the design of our hardware products, turning a napkin sketch into a mass produced regulated medical device in a very short time frame. This involved everything from design, prototyping, identifying manufacturers in China, setting up a supply chain, verification and validation testing, regulatory approvals (FDA, FCC, CE mark, etc), working on the factory line, and ramping up production.

I've always wanted to apply my technical skill set to help solve meaningful problems and use startups as vehicles to help address those problems. You're choosing to fight an uphill battle operating in a regulated environment with fewer funding options and much more risk than in-vogue tech, but there's no substitute for the satisfaction of seeing the positive impact that these products and services have.

Demand for our products has surged overnight by a factor of 100+. On Amazon alone we used to sell an average of 100ish devices a day and now we sell 10,000 a day. Scaling our production and supply chain in China has been incredibly challenging—we've needed to ramp up mechanical tooling, production lines, and procure components, all at a time when China is still suffering the effects of COVID-19. Seeing the impact our products are having has been incredibly rewarding.

Additionally, our illness monitoring system was set up to help curb influenza-like outbreaks. COVID-19 behaves very differently than the traditional flu, so retooling our data models for COVID-19 in such a short time frame was certainly nontrivial. Leading the team that built healthweather.us was one of the most profound and rewarding experiences of my career to-date.

Just a big thank you to my teachers at Thacher, but in particular Mr. Meyer and Mr. Shagam who helped get me where I am today.