Ebola, first identified in 1976, experienced 1,716 confirmed cases through 2013 according to the World Health Organization. The current West Africa Ebola outbreak, affecting Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria has dwarfed the previous numbers. As of October, 20, 2014, over 9,200 cases have been identified with over 4,500 deaths occurring.
Researchers, physicians and technology are teaming up in an attempt to curb the spread as well as provide comfort to patients while they recover.
SmartPhones Can Educate
Physicians continue to call for increased use of technologies to deal with the ebola outbreak. Many ebola cases have gone undetected as the victims relied on traditional cures. Emerging technologies can help with early-warning, response time and increased communication between healthcare teams working in remote places.
A story in The Guardian One team, headed by American specialist, Karen Jacobsen, feels that smartphones will play an expanding part in fighting the disease. As mobile phones have become ubiquitous in west Africa, Jacobsen’s team has shown that routine surviellance and monitoring of symptoms can be relied on by proper utilization of Smartphones. Fiona Mclysaght, the Sierra Leone director of the non-profit group, Concern, says that simple text messages have played a vital part in health education as well.
Cell Phones Check Ebola’s Spread
A wireless carrier in West Africa has provided information to healthcare workers which has been pulled from cell phones in Senegal. The data gives researchers a peek into regional population movments that may help predict the spread of Ebola.
The data, provided by Orange Telecom, is not planned on being used to limit travel or impose efforts to restrict citizens movements. The data was gathered in 2013 from over 150,000 phones. The data was then anonymized and aggreated and will be part of a larger data analysis scheduled for 2015.
The information helped construct a computerized model build a picture of the travel patterns of people thorughout West Africa. The model is supplemented with information about population movements from more standard sources including surveys.
Based on records and data obtained so far, a team working out of Boston Children’s Hospital, has produced a graphic animation tracing the epidemic’s spread since March. Researchers caution that the model is basically a rough draft and it relies on historical movments without taking into consideration how people may have changed their traffic patterns in response to the current crisis.
VOIP Plays a Part
After Vidyo, a VOIP inspired video conferencing software, was used by an Ebola Patient at the Nebraska Medical Center to communicate with family and physicians in his home state, many other agencies are expressing a desire to get Voice Over-IP.
As reported in The Mirror, Dr. Richard Sacra, a missionary doctor from Massachusettes, was suspected to have contracted ebola and was held in isolation in the Biocontainment Patient Care Unit at NMC. His wife was at the couple’s home and with the VOIP connection, Sacra was able to communicate face-to-face with her. Physicians are saying that with the time-critical nature of the ebola virus, the human interaction provided through VOIP is a unique platform and will eventually make a difference in the way acute care is delivered throughout America.
Approximately 30 of the top 100 integrated healthcare networks in America use VOIP. Its use in treating ebola patients is pushing the technology to become more fully integrated into the healthcare system of tools along with medical records systems, telemetry management software and ICU monitoring.
By Jerry Nelson
