EBSCO Health and Isabel Healthcare Expand Partnership

EBSCO Health and Isabel Healthcare (Isabel) have announced an expansion of their existing partnership. EBSCO Health will now sell the Isabel Symptom Checker to hospitals and healthcare organizations. The Isabel Symptom Checker serves as a patient engagement gateway to guide consumers and patients into and through an organization’s provider network. 

Patients are going to the internet to search for health information. By providing them with a trusted source, organizations can improve the patient experience and drive them to appropriate resources and information. Patients enter their symptoms and receive a list of possible diagnoses. From there, the patient can be directed to the appropriate physicians, relevant clinical content, wellness programs, and patient education information and triaged to access the appropriate venue of care; all designed to reduce patient leakage and improve patient engagement. Access is provided from the consumer facing website or through patient portals, providing the organization a consistent method to engage the patient in a number of touch points.

Isabel’s Symptom Checker is based on the Isabel professional diagnosis decision support tool which has been peer reviewed, validated and used by physicians around the world to assist in diagnosis decisions for over 15 years. By providing access to a trusted source rather than general web searches, the patient-provider interaction can be more meaningful and efficient as the starting point has been elevated.  

Isabel Healthcare’s CEO Donald Bauman says patients are going online to find medical information and the Symptom Checker ensures they are getting their information from a trusted source of information. “Having Isabel’s Symptom Checker on a hospital website or in a patient portal helps hospitals and healthcare systems assist their patients in finding valuable information online. This information is vetted, easy to understand and can lead to better interactions between patients and their doctors.” Resource such as symptom checker can improve usage of hospital websites and encourage patients to learn more about their symptoms as well as the clinicians and programs available.

Meaningful Use statutes require an increase in patient engagement. Isabel’s Symptom Checker is a way sites can meet these requirements. The tool can also pull in content from patient education resources such as Health Library™ giving patients access to vetted, updated information that is easy to understand.

Using Symptom Checker, patients enter their symptoms and receive the top likely diagnoses and links to additional information. Patients are able to save, email and print the information. Hospitals can also include a triage tool that gives patients an indicator of whether they should call their doctor, make an appointment, or seek immediate care.

Chief Medical Officer of MacNeal Hospital in Chicago, Charles Bareis, MD, FACP, says, hospitals and healthcare practices using Isabel’s Symptom Checker report better patient engagement prompting more meaningful patient/provider interactions. "Patients are researching their symptoms and medical conditions online and I’d prefer they utilize a reputable evidence based source of information such as Isabel. Any time patients can be more informed about their health and what their symptoms might mean, I think that’s a good thing.”

EBSCO Health and Isabel have previously partnered to integrate their clinical decision support tools DynaMed™ and Isabel, allowing mutual customers to link from one resource to another.

Isabel and EBSCO Health will be at HIMSS 2015 (EBSCO in booth #2661 and Isabel in the Business & Clinical Analytics/Intelligence Knowledge Center booth #5484-2). Donald Bauman will present on Engagement Tools to Drive Efficiency, Tuesday April 14, 11:30-12:00 in the Knowledge Center.

About EBSCO Health
EBSCO Health, part of EBSCO Information Services, is a leading provider of clinical decision support solutions, healthcare business intelligence, and medical research information for the healthcare industry. EBSCO Health users include professionals in medicine, nursing, and allied health. Flagship products include CINAHL®, DynaMed™, Nursing Reference Center™, clinical e-books and e-journals, EBSCO Discovery Service™, licensed databases (such as MEDLINE®), plus EBSCONET®. EBSCO databases are powered by EBSCOhost®, the electronic resource favored by libraries around the world.

About Isabel Healthcare
Isabel Healthcare Inc. was founded in 2000 by Jason Maude and is named after Maude’s daughter who almost died after a potentially fatal illness was not recognized. For over 15 years, Isabel Healthcare has been validated and peer reviewed and is now recognized as the leader in diagnostic decision support. Isabel is the only diagnosis checklist system fully integrated with EMRs. In addition to Isabel Professional, Isabel’s family of diagnosis performance solutions also include the Isabel Symptom Checker for consumers and patient engagement, Isabel Clinical Educator, a case based learning platform for clinical learners and Isabel Active Intelligence, a fully embedded diagnosis intelligence solution. Connect with us at www.isabelhealthcare.com, or 734-332-0612.

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