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WHAT'S NEW?

March 16, 2020
Later this year, I am planning to publish the IDdx database as a web-based application. I am now in the process of reviewing nine of the twelve main references that are in new editions.
 
February 26, 2018
See the new review at iMedical Apps: 15 Not-So-Obvious (But Essential) Emergency Medicine Apps: "An amazing point of care decision tool to help you refine an infectious disease differential. I continue to be surprised that such a functional and comprehensive app that provides so much value can remain free - kudos to the team behind the app for doing this. You can put in all the key data points on a patient (labs, physician exam, chief complaint) - and the app gives you a differential on what infectious disease pathology they might have." -- Iltifat Husain, MD
 
November 7, 2017
 
June 18, 2017
All references to CDC Travel (142) and ABX Guide (205) were updated. The latest edition of CDC Travel was published this summer as CDC Yellow Book 2018, and ABX Guide is continuously updated on the website at https://www.hopkinsguides.com. All "Drug Link" hyperlinks in IDdx were checked. If an infectious disease shows "person to person" under "Source," this means that the disease can be transmitted by the inhalation or oral route from person to person. Infectious diseases transmitted by needle stick, transfusion, or sexually will not show "person to person," but they will show "needle" or "sex" under "Entry." Diseases no longer showing person-to-person transmission are: AIDS, Arthropod-borne viral arthritis, Chancroid, Chlamydial urethritis, Colorado tick fever, Ehrlichiosis, Genital herpes, and Gonorrhea.
 
August 17, 2016
IDdx was reviewed in the "Book Reviews" section of the Journal of Occupational & Environmental Medicine by Dr. Tanisha Taylor. She said, "This app would be very useful in the field of occupational medicine, including but not limited to areas of travel medicine, wellness programs, private practice, and hospital-based practice as well as in teaching. To the (especially Global) Corporate Medical Director, this app would be indispensable." Thanks to Dr. Taylor for reviewing the app. In response to her question about Zika virus disease, this disease is important because of its congenital effects. As it says in the App in Helpful Hints, "Not covered are congenital and neonatal infections."
 
February 13, 2016
Three PDF documents that you can print were added to assist in building queries: Signs and Symptoms in IDdx, Other Criteria for Queries in IDdx, and Occupations by Category in IDdx. Also, I have added a channel on YouTube to show "how to use" videos. Please subscribe to the channel as I plan to be adding new videos in the next few weeks.
 
August 18, 2015
See review published by iMedicalApps: "A remarkable infectious disease tool that combines ease of use with up to date epidemiological data that could truly help providers make the correct diagnosis at the point of care."
 
June 17, 2015
All of the references to CCDM (Control of Communicable Diseases Manual) were updated to the 20th edition, published earlier this year.
 
March 18, 2015
Follow this link to see the 3-page article by International Innovation with the title "Public health without borders." The story is about the IDdx and Haz-Map databases. International Innovation is a leading scientific dissemination service.
 
March 7, 2015
The new version of IDdx for iPhone and iPad was released yesterday. The Android update was released a few weeks ago. New features include Ranked Diseases and Weighted Findings. See Home page for more details.
 
January 3, 2015
All PPID references were updated to the 8th Edition, which was published in the summer of 2014.
 
November 13, 2014
IDdx was picked as one of the 25 best nursing apps. See this page.
 
November 2, 2014
Added first paragraph to Helpful Hints. Added "pulmonary edema" to findings. The finding "transverse myelitis" was changed to "myelitis." See Signs & Symptoms. Updated Wallach references to the 10th edition.
 
October 16, 2014
Next week I am attending a conference in Baltimore (Health Informatics and Technology Conference) to give a talk on "Harnessing the Power of Infectious Disease Information with a Relational Database." The slide presentation is available on Slideshare. Two Word document handouts are available to download: IDdx Features and IDdx New Features 2014. I will also attend the 2-day Johns Hopkins "Ninth Infectious Disease Update for Primary Care and Hospital Medicine."
 
October 15, 2014
I have started a "blog" on Pinterest. See pinterest.com/IDdxApp. See the boards on "What can you do with IDdx?" and "12 Major Reference Books Used in IDdx."
 
September 14, 2014
It took about 6 months to review all 249 diseases in the 12 primary references and to revise the findings for each disease. A new table in the database was used to record the findings from each reference for each disease and to count the total times that the finding occurred in the references. This table will enable the color coding of findings for each disease to display how frequently the findings are used to describe the disease in the primary references. For example, gray highlighting indicates only one reference used the finding; regular text with no highlighting indicates only two references; and yellow highlighting indicates three or more references used the finding to describe the disease.
 
"Lethargy" was added as a new finding. "Skin lesion or rash, circinate" was changed to "cellulitis or rash, circinate." "Coma" was changed to "stupor, coma." Fatigue" was changed to "fatigue, weakness." "Weakness" was changed "muscle weakness." "Delirium" was changed to "confusion, delirium." I revised the "Signs & Symptoms" page.
 
April 13, 2014
Two new findings were added: pneumonitis and hepatitis. Both of these are complications. The finding "fever, biphasic" was changed to "fever, biphasic or relapsing." So far, 29 of the 248 diseases have been reviewed for the "weighted findings" project to be completed this year.
 
March 30, 2014
Added new disease "Penicillium marneffei infection" and new finding "rhabdomyolysis." The name of the finding "hemoglobinuria" was changed to "hemolysis." The Signs & Symptoms page has been revised to show definitions of "hemolysis" and "rhabdomyolysis." Added statistics for "Global Cases/Year" and "US Cases/Year." This will allow the query results to be sorted by most common to least common diseases after this feature is added to the app. 
 
February 23, 2014
In Harrison's Infectious Diseases, 2nd Edition, see Table 30-1 in the chapter on sexually transmitted infections (STIs). "In all societies, STIs rank among the most common of all infectious diseases, with >30 infections now classified as predominantly sexually transmitted or as frequently sexually transmissible." The authors write in a footnote to that table, "Among U.S. patients for whom a risk factor can be ascertained, most hepatitis B virus infections are transmitted sexually." 
 
In the update of IDdx to be published later this week, "Helicobacter pylori infection" was added as a disease in IDdx. Cancer is a complication of this infectious disease as it is for HIV, Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, Human T-cell lymphotropic virus, Papillomavirus, EBV, and three trematode infections (Clonorchiasis, Opisthorchiasis, and Schistosomiasis, urinary). "Persistent viral infection is estimated to be the root cause of as many as 20% of human malignancies." [Harrison ID, p. 766]
 
February 10, 2014
Plans for this year are to improve IDdx with two new features. First, the user will be able to sort the results of queries, showing the most common diseases first. Currently, disease results are sorted alphabetically. Two new fields have been added to the database: Global Cases and US Cases. These two new fields will enable the user to sort the results by either global or US incidence rates according to the best statistics that I can find. Diseases will be ranked from 1 to 245 from highest incidence to lowest incidence. The second idea is to document every finding for each of the 245 diseases according to each of the 12 main references: Cecil, Harrison, ID, CCDM, PPID, Merck, CDC Travel, ABX Guide, 5MCC, Cohen, Guerrant, and Wallach. There are currently 100 findings. This information would be relayed to the user by some device in the App, perhaps by color coding. For example, if the finding for the particular disease was found in 4 or more references, then it would be highlighted in green. If it was present in only one reference, it would be highlighted in yellow. This would tell the user how frequently the finding is linked to the disease in current medical books of infectious diseases. More links means more likely that the finding is essential to the diagnosis of the particular disease.

So far this year, I have added 141 of the 245 numbers for US cases and 131 of the 245 numbers for the global cases. I have reviewed finding for all 245 diseases in 3 of the 12 references. I deleted the category "Biological Weapons." I added the category "Immune-Related" and it contains 5 diseases (Arthritis, reactive; Erythema multiforme; Guillain-Barre syndrome; Inhalation fever, bioaerosols; and Inhalation fever, fumes). Anthrax, Tularemia, and Plague are no longer split into two diseases for each. Other category changes were to convert "Community-Acquired" into "Person-To-Person" and "Foodborne Trematodes" into "Trematodes." Papillomavirus infections were split into two diseases "low-risk" and "high-risk." "Human T-cell lymphotropic virus infection" was added as a disease. "Cancer" was added as a finding (complication).

 
December 7, 2013
CDC Travel and 5-Minute Clinical Consult references were updated to the 2014 editions. The following references were removed: MedConsult, Current Consult, Weinstein, Up-to-Date, Dxplain, eMedicine, USAMRIID, Harrison's Practice, Lexi-ID, Sherris, Wilson, White, Mims, and Zoonoses. The removed references were replaced with newer references from sources that are being regularly revised, including two standard textbooks of medicine: Cecil and Harrison. Also, all hyperlinks to The Merck Manual were checked, and hyperlinks to the CDC website were added.
 
June 21, 2013
I completely revised the slides for "Global Access to Infectious Disease Information."
 
May 28, 2013
The Android version is now available on Google Play.
 
March 10, 2013
Earlier this week, I attended HIMSS13 in New Orleans and met with the Chief Technology Officer of USBMIS, now Atmosphere Apps, to talk about the soon to updated user interface for IDdx. An Android version will also be released within the next two months.

October 1, 2012
In this update, I added 242 disease-finding links after searching the online version of the 2011 edition of Tropical Infectious Diseases, edited by Guerrant, Walker, and Weller. There are now 5287 links between the 99 findings and the 253 infectious diseases. I also added two new diseases, "African tick bite fever" and "Rickettsioses, spotted fever group." The update also includes recommendations from the 2011 edition of Immunization of Health-Care Personnel published by ACIP.
 
 
June 29, 2012
Updated references to the latest editions of Merck Manual, CDC Travel, ABX Guide, and 5MCC-2013. The updated file will be available though the App Store in the next few weeks.
 
May 28, 2012
In the latest edition released earlier this year, occupations and incubation periods were added to queries. For queries of occupation, headings were added to show the hazardous job tasks that the worker must do to be at risk for the infection.
 
July 3, 2011
Added a new page to the website: IDdx Compared to GIDEON.

January 4, 2011
The i-Phone application was released on December 23, 2010. I have just finished a major update of IDdx after checking the 99 signs and symptoms against three online books and the GIDEON database. The three books that can now be searched online are Control of Communicable Diseases Manual (CCDM), Principles and Practice of Infectious Diseases (PPID), and Infectious Diseases (Cohen).

November 8, 2010
Made oral presentation at annual meeting of APHA in Denver entitled "Global Access to Infectious Disease Information" and was moderator in panel discussion with Stephen Berger, MD, Paul Auwaerter, MD, and Burton Wilke, PhD. The other presentations were about GIDEON (Dr. Berger), ABX Guide (Dr. Auwaerter), and CCDM (Dr. Wilke).

May 4, 2010
Published paper on "Using a Relational Database to Index Infectious Disease Information" in the Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health. Download full text for free at http://www. mdpi.com/1660-4601/7/5/2177/.

March 11, 2010
Presented poster at International Conference of Infectious Diseases in Miami entitled "Indexing Infectious Disease Information into a Relational Database for Useful Queries."