[December 17, 2014]

VisualDx Launches Open Access Digital Technology to Combat Global Travel-Related Disease Misdiagnosis

VisualDx, the world's leading clinical decision support system for physicians and front line health care professionals, announced today the launch of an Emerging Global Disease digital tool to help front line medical responders easily and accurately identify travel related infectious diseases. Available to the medical community and general public free of charge, this offering comes from heightened awareness of the spread and misdiagnosis of global travel-related diseases including Ebola.

Diseases that may be prevalent in a country thousands of miles away are often unfamiliar to primary care physicians, as well as urgent care and emergency department personnel outside that region. With the VisualDx Emerging Global Disease tool - available at - http://www.visualdx.com/public-health/emerging-global-disease, providers and patients can quickly input the name of a country where travel recently occurred, select from symptoms, and be presented with diagnoses for consideration in a matter of seonds.

"The recent spread of Ebola has sharpened our senses not only to travel related infectious disease, but also the degree to which so many medical professionals do not have experience in diagnosing issues that they may have never before encountered," said Art Papier, MD, co-founder and chief executive officer, VisualDx. "Our professional medical system includes a database of diseases occurring in every country complemented by a comprehensive medical image database of over 100,000 images. In the interest of public health, we are pleased to make this valuable resource available free of charge."

The full VisualDx suite is a web- and app-based clinical decision support system proven to enhance diagnostic accuracy, aid therapeutic decisions, and improve patient safety. Today, the technology is used at 1,500 hospitals and related clinics across the U.S. and by tens of thousands of individual health care professionals. It is based on the world's largest, curated and metadata enabled medical diagnosis image library.

Compared to general web search engines, the VisualDx technology offers structured, and medically accurate data and reference images to aid medical professionals with making precise diagnoses for patients. The tool also integrates into electronic health care record systems via a widget.

"It's not at this point just about another misdiagnosis of a patient with Ebola, it's about diagnostic accuracy," said Dr. Papier. "Ebola detection protocols are now in place for patients arriving from West Africa with a fever, but we believe that many clinicians are unaware of other infectious diseases that are emerging worldwide. Our technology provides a much needed solution for the medical community."

About VisualDx

Headquartered in Rochester, N.Y., VisualDx's team of physicians, educators, artists, and computer scientists have developed a web-based clinical decision support system to enhance diagnostic accuracy, aid therapeutic decisions, and improve patient safety. It has become the tool of choice for front line health workers who are looking for a curated, hard-wired approach encompassing both knowledge and images to provide accurate diagnosis in a timely manner. For more information, visit www.visualdx.com.

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