One year ago, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust introduced ThermaFY Protect, a bespoke thermal screening technology that builds a heat map of a person from a distance to calculate body temperatures within seconds.

New data shows that the innovative thermal technology has been extremely successful in improving patient, staff and visitor safety during the COVID-19 outbreak with:

• 2 million scans conducted in the last year
• Over 8,500 patients and staff scanned every day – putting patient and staff safety first
• Nearly 4,000 hot scans read
• Improved confidence in the Trust’s stringent infection control measures

As part of its CW Innovation programme, the Trust approached ThermaFY at the beginning of the pandemic to codevelop and install automated temperature scanning stations at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital and West Middlesex University Hospital to help reduce the spread of infection.

ThermaFY combines temperature readings with staff IDs and patient / visitor QR codes providing valuable information in the fight against COVID-19 and other infections.

Dominic Conlin, Hospital Director at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, says: “One year on, it’s not only great to see the significant benefit ThermaFY Protect has had as a key part of a package of actions that have been used to manage the spread of COVID-19 across our hospitals, it’s also important to recognise the incredible joint working that tested and scaled this service so quickly – it’s a great example of our approach to innovation and how well we are working with our partners and responding to the challenge of COVID-19.”

Amanda Pickford, Chief Executive at ThermaFY, says: “We are delighted to continue our successful partnership with Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust hitting another milestone of 2 million people scanned. We very much look forward to the months ahead developing our innovative proposition to help maintain the safety of staff, patients and visitors entering the hospitals.”

Find out more about our CW Innovation programme and other innovation projects here.