Managing epidemics

Epidemic warning

All public health experts agree that the key to fighting any viral outbreak is early detection and immediate quarantine of infected persons.  But to date, detection and quarantine have only been possible once the patient presents at a medical facility. There has been no way to identify a patient or a cluster within the population before medical attention is sought.  To be effective in the fight against emerging viruses, the public health professional must be able to rapidly identify the emergence of a disease outbreak both internal to the local healthcare system and externally in the public domain.

The analysis of the emerging symptoms must be conducted with the minimum risk to the health care worker while at the same time minimize the risk of spreading the contamination and if an outbreak is identified, the response to the incident must be effective and well managed.  A solution with these characteristics is also an effective tool in the homeland security challenge of countering bio-terrorism threats.

RegPoint with the Supervisor and the Care module have created a completely new medium through which the disease control supervisor, physician and patient can communicate in the event of a public health threat or other emergency.

The RegPoint Supervisor combines information delivered in a secure manner using mobile phones from the selected individuals (healthcare professionals, other first responders, military personnel, airline staff, or members of the public) to allow analysis of clinical information to be conducted to identify outbreak clusters in the surveillance population. This is the only solution that can identify clusters before patients present to a health facility.

By using the survey function in RegPoint, disease management authorities can easily identify the number and location of people with symptoms on an epidemic disease. Advice and alerts can be sent to them, as well as to the healthcare administrators.