Hospital Records Are Adapting to Flag Ebola

A New Application Matches Patient’s Travel and Family History With Medical Symptoms

WALL STREET JOURNAL                         Nov. 3, 2014
By Melina Beck

A month ago, Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston had no way to flag in its electronic medical records if an incoming patient had been to West Africa and had symptoms suggesting Ebola.

Now it does. Five days after the first U.S. case was confirmed in Texas, the hospital deployed a new Ebola application made by QPID Health Inc. that automatically matches a patient’s travel and family history with medical symptoms. If Ebola is suspected, the application flashes a blinking “Q” to alert hospital personnel.

Dr. Garry Choy, who helped design Mass General’s QPID system. Dominick Reuter

...EMR vendors have scrambled to add new screening questions and alerts to their systems in the wake of the missteps with the Ebola patient at Texas Health Presbyterian Dallas Hospital. That patient, Thomas Eric Duncan, who had recently come to the U.S. from Liberia, was initially misdiagnosed as having “sinusitis” and sent home, only to return three days later, gravely ill....
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