Unique Clinical Decision Support System, Now In India

EHM News Bureau - Mumbai

Isabelhealthcare.com, an award winning and validated clinical decision support system designed to help reduce and manage diagnosis error at the point of care has been launched in India.

Isabel’s unique feature is a diagnosis reminder system, which instantly gives the clinician a checklist of likely diagnosis. Using the same proprietary technology which powers the diagnosis reminder system, it also mobilises knowledge to help you find relevant and specific answers to your clinical questions more easily and quickly. Isabel mobilises knowledge from respected medical textbooks, annotated images, journal abstracts categorised into ‘What’s New’ and ‘Lessons Learnt from Error’ all linked together through a comprehensive diagnosis taxonomy.

First conceived in the UK five years ago, Isabel is a direct response to the near fatal misdiagnosis of a three-year-old girl Isabel Maude who had developed necrotizing fasciitis, a well described complication following chicken pox. Isabel was seen by her family doctor and also by the local hospital’s providers. But both of them failed to recognise the clinical features of narcotising fasciitis, and sent the child home.

Thus it has been found in many cases that doctors have either missed the correct diagnosis or had made a delayed diagnosis. The price of the software is 90 USD per bed.

Says Managing Director, Dr Joseph Britto, the brain behind the website, “Isabel can help improve the quality of healthcare, bed efficiency, decision making, the provision of knowledge and education into the workflow and decrease the costs of diagnosis error (delayed and misdiagnosis).”

An evaluation study of Isabel’s paediatric diagnosis support system was conducted at the paediatric intensive care unit of KEM hospital in Mumbai. The study found that even without any training offered to the users, ISABEL provided a reasonable sensitivity of 80.5 per cent. The tool holds promise of being useful in developing countries.

Medical error is the sixth leading cause of death in the US, surpassing deaths due to diabetes, influenza, and pneumonia. It has been found that an estimated 98,000 deaths per year occur due to preventable medical error and failure to diagnose and treat in time contributed to almost 75 per cent of all mortality attributable to patient safety incidents in the US.