South Dakota Department of Health Deploys VisualDx Statewide

Nov. 5, 2008 - PRLog -- Logical Images Inc., the expert source for visual diagnostic decision support technology and consumer skin health information, today announced that the South Dakota Department of Health’s (SDDOH) Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response has deployed VisualDx to help facilitate preparedness efforts at the point-of-care and to bring specialist-level information into 82 medical facilities throughout South Dakota. VisualDx offers health care providers fast, point-of-care access to a visual diagnostic decision support system that improves health care quality by reducing costly medical errors through better efficiencies in disease recognition and response to events of public health significance.

Using disaster preparedness funds from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR), SDDOH licensed VisualDx to provide community medical facilities with a tool to more quickly and accurately identify medical conditions based on visual clues. VisualDx is the only Web-based decision support system that merges medical images with clinical information to build a visual list of patient-relevant conditions using problem-oriented based search criteria that can improve diagnostic accuracy by 120 percent. Half of all diseases demonstrate a skin or pattern clue. VisualDx offers real-time access to concise clinical information and more than 17,000 medical images presenting diseases in variation of severity, skin type, age and passage of time, covering more than 900 diseases—250 of which are infectious.

“VisualDx enables clinicians to more quickly and accurately identify unusual and unfamiliar conditions, and this is particularly important in rural areas that have limited access to specialists and other resources,” said Bill Chalcraft, director, Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response. “In addition to helping physicians to accurately diagnose medical conditions, we can use this diagnostic decision support system to communicate public health initiatives and critical events that require immediate attention.”

Easily accessed from any computer with an internet browser, VisualDx connects clinicians to specialist-level knowledge and keeps both rural and urban medical facilities equally informed about critical information from SDDOH. VisualDx is customizable, allowing SDDOH to add specified links on disease pages to help drive and improve disease reporting. Home page health alerts can also be created to generate awareness on key topics defined by SDDOH. Additionally, the system has incorporated the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention‘s (CDC) category A, B and C bioterrorism agents within its Terrorism Recognition module.

“By making VisualDx available in medical centers throughout the state, the Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response has recognized the benefits a visual diagnostic tool offers providers on the front lines and is taking prudent steps to facilitate preparedness efforts at these sites,” said Art Papier, MD, chief scientific officer of Logical Images. “Misdiagnosis is a problem that can greatly impact rural areas where a provider has limited resources, and patients have limited access to specialists. VisualDx brings specialist-level knowledge to help clinicians accurately diagnose conditions and better communicate critical information at the point-of-care.”

VisualDx has been installed at nearly 1,000 sites including primary health care practices, hospitals, teaching institutions, government agencies and other public health entities such as the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Services, the Indiana Department of Health and the Wyoming Department of Health. For more information visit http://www.logicalimages.com/visualdx.