Helyxon Thermometer

Measuring Temperature was Never This Easy

HELYXON is a Med Tech enterprise in collaboration with IIT Madras, born and based out of IIT Research Park, Chennai. HELYXON’s groundbreaking technology at the core helps clinicians around the world monitor patients remotely and treat them with more certainty.

India has over 60 million households with small children. Children who are vulnerable to illnesses especially during the monsoon season.

Added to this, many Indian households have three generations of the same family living together and in small spaces in cramped urban households. And they usually have a single thermometer shared within the entire family.

While most Indian adults are comfortable with placing the thermometer in their armpits, children often are reluctant as it feels cold (especially during fevers) and ticklish. And anyone who has a kid knows how difficult it is to measure the temperature while the child is squirming. This leaves many parents opting to record their child’s temperature orally.

And potentially increases the risk of infection if the thermometer is shared within the family.

Helyxon came to us with a unique brief: Design a thermometer that can have detachable probes, ability to store and retrieve the time and temperature recorded and enable continuous temperature monitoring.

And design it for large volume manufacturing in India.

Project Insights

Helyxon wanted the thermometer to:

Reduce the Risk of Infection

Make the design modular. We broke up the product into two: probe and body. The probes would be color coded for distinct uses, oral, rectal and underarm.

Measure continuously

Since the probes could be detached, why not add a body patch connected to the device that could measure the temperature continuously. This would allow constant monitoring for infants and the infirm and provide enough data to generate trends.

Make it easy to use

The probes can be attached or detached using a type C USB connector. This is robust enough to handle multiple insertions over its lifetime and universally familiar.

Crunch the Costs

We worked with Helyxon to reduce the part count; the plastics consumed; the steps necessary to assemble the product. We even worked with their PCB design partner to build a display using an LED array instead of an off-the-shelf display to drive down the costs further.

Bringing it Together

We opened our ecosystem to help Helyxon find the best partners to prototype & tool up in China, mold and assemble in India at costs that fit their budget.

Key Tasks Accomplished

Concept Development
Enclosure Design
Prototype Design
Materials Selection
Design for Manufacturing
Tolerance Analysis
Prototype Liaison
Vendor management