We just released SnapDx Ebola – a free Ebola Screening Tool to help healthcare professionals and patients rapidly decide whether patients need to be isolated for possible Ebola Virus Disease. The web app also helps people understand the risks of contracting the disease.
SnapDx Ebola is based on the latest guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and is vetted by infectious disease experts. It is designed to be very simple and intuitive – in fact, the patient-oriented version asks just two screening questions.
Triaging for Ebola is actually fairly simple but amidst the noise and panic, it is easy to lose sight of these principles. SnapDx Ebola cuts through medical information overload and gets people the answers they need, fast.
The reality is that diseases like Ebola coexist with a variety of similarly-presenting diseases, like the flu or the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), another emerging disease clocking a high fatality rate. People in the West are far more likely to succumb to the flu compared to Ebola. It was essential to take these facts into account when building our tool. Patients using the tool who are flagged as low risk for Ebola are reminded to take their flu shot this time of the year, given its greater impact on their health. The clinician-oriented version of SnapDx Ebola also takes into account the MERS virus that may also be carried by returning travellers, and which would also merit similar isolation precautions.
Through tools like this, we bridge the information gap between the common person and medical experts, improving healthcare for all at lower costs. Ebola is a complex problem and Ebola triage that’s accessible to all is one small piece towards the solution.
We will be open sourcing SnapDx Ebola in time for the Oxford Digital Health Ebola Hackathon. Stay tuned.
SnapDx Ebola can be used immediately at http://ebola.snapdx.co.
We’d like to also thank infectious disease expert, Dr. Stephen Vaughan, and internist Dr. Aleem Bharwani for reviewing the tool’s content.