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A database for diseases

Perplexed by the complex nature of a disease. Unable to find diagnosis and also treatment. Then, log on to www.isabelhealthcare.com, says Manoj Rammohan

A three-year old girl was down with fever for three days. A few bluish discolourations and tenderness on her body, vomiting and diarrhoea made the doctors at the St. Mary’s Hospital, UK to jump into a conclusion - the girl was suffering from chicken pox.

After a few words of assurance and medicines, Isabel Maude went home, only to return with severe illness. What doctors missed first time, was found now. Along with chicken pox, she was infected with ‘Necrotising Faseiih’s’ - better known as ‘flesh eating bug’.

One of the consulting pediatrician at the hospital Dr Joseph Britto was moved by the little girl’s plight and her father John Maude even wondered ‘why there is no system to provide right diagnosis about a disease?’ That was in 1999.

Now, Dr Britto has an answer to that query, ‘www.isablehealthcare.com’ - a diagnosis reminder system whose database has information on 10,000 diseases along with emerging areas of treatments, specific symptoms and even preventive measures. Even the search pulls up errors reported in journals and also keeps track with the latest diagnosis-specific journal abstracts.

A website launched in June 2002 with paediatric diagnosis alone was upgraded with other medical fields in January 2005. In the words of Dr Britto who is the CEO and co-founder of Isabel Healthcare Inc., it is a ‘Google built for

medicine’.

How it works?

First of all, it is meant for hospitals and individual medical practitioners (most of the users). For diagnostic information, the user has to enter his age, gender, symptoms and his/her geographical location. The last parameter helps in throwing up results with region specific details such as the frequency of the occurence of a particular disease. Once these requirements are completed, there is more choice. You can decide whether you need the suggestions for diagnosis, related diagnosis, drugs or even reading text books for a clearer picture.

According to Dr Britto, the information is culled out from an extensive database of textbooks such as ‘Oxford Textbook of Medicine’ and about 105 medical journals. The data management (including updating and adding latest developments) is done by a clinical team comprising doctors and nurses, based in UK. And the whole system runs on a software called ‘Autonomy’.

SNLP

Unlike the regular search engines, this website uses Statistical Natural Language Processing (SNLP) software making the search more easier.

The SNLP software is based mainly on two statistical theorems: Thomas Bayer’s Theorem of Probability and Claude-Shannon’s Information Theory. Rather than making use of the ‘and’ ‘or’ way of differentiating, the word pattern forms the basis. And the identification of a particular search result depends on the frequency of the occurence of words and their pattern (such as how many times the same word is repeated during a search).

More over, the system can be used not just in computer terminals but also in wireless hand held devices. It can also be embedded into the Hospital Information Systems (HIS) or Electronic Medical Records (EMR) of healthcare institutions.

This is a paid website but one can avail the services without paying money for a trial period of one month. For hospitals, it costs US$90 per bed per year and for individual users, it will $375 per year. For further information log on to www.isabelhealthcare.com.