BS EN 80601-2-59:2009 Medical electrical equipment. Particular requirements for the basic safety and essential performance of screening thermographs for human febrile temperature screening
BS EN 80601 is the standard that has been prepared under a mandate given to cenelec by the European commission and the European free trade association. Within its scope the standard covers all relevant essential requirements of the EC Directive 93/42/EEC with the exception of essential requirements 3 and 10.1.
Compliance with this standard provides one means of conformity with the specified essential requirements of the Medical Devices Directive concerned.
The minimum safety requirements specified in this particular standard are considered to provide for a practical degree of safety in the operation of ME equipment for human febrile temperature screening.
This part of BS EN 80601 describes the ME equipment that uses infrared technology to detect naturally emitted heat at the skin surface of the face. Such ME equipment can be useful at ports-ofentry or ports-of-exit and the entrances to buildings under indoor environmental conditions to separate febrile from afebrile individuals to help prevent the spread of communicable diseases. Care can be needed when evaluating individuals under changing environmental conditions, but the inner canthus of the eye has been demonstrated to be a robust measurement site and is supplied by the internal carotid artery.
A body core temperature of 38 °c or above was used as the criterion to restrict travelling during the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) epidemic (april 2003). The US center for disease control advises that SARS typically begins with a temperature above 38 °c, which is 1 °c higher than normal human body core temperature which averages around 37 °c. It is hard to give an accurate assessment of how many people were checked by infrared temperature measurements in China duri...