Dr Neil Rawlins tells how the Isabel differential diagnosis tool helped him diagnose his daughter

Neil Rawlins MD and CMIO at Kadlec Health systems in Richmond, WA talks about how he used the Isabel differential diagnosis tool iPhone app to help him rapidly and efficiently diagnose his own daughter with a rare disorder.

Video Transcript:

My name is Neil Rawlins. I'm an OB/GYN physician in Richland, Washington. I'm currently at Kadlec Health System. I am working part-time as an OB/GYN and part-time as the Chief Medical Information Officer.

One of the problems we have in medicine is that if you look at a patient that walks in my exam room, 65% of the time when they walk out, I've got the right diagnosis for them. That means 35% of the time I'm wrong.

If you've got the right diagnosis, then you can find a treatment that's effective, rather than, Let's try this. Let's try this. Or let's try this. We can say, Okay. Now we know what you've got, and these are the best things to try. So most of our references that we've used over the years only told us what to do if we knew the diagnosis. So if we don't know the diagnosis, most of our references in medicine today don't help us. This is one that helps us in those cases.

Another clinical example just happened recently in my own family. My daughter developed a movement disorder, and we were wanting some specifics and a lot of people were saying, Well, maybe it's just a psychiatric conversion disorder that she has. So let's talk to a psychiatrist. And it just didn't feel right. Her symptoms were pretty sharp onset, pretty dramatic.

So within three days of the onset of symptoms, early in the morning, I had my mobile app and was entering in some of the symptoms that she had. And she had symptoms of both facial spasms and movement disorders in her arms, and there are very few things that actually fit into that category.

We were able to, because of some genetic testing we had, come up with a preliminary diagnosis within 72 hours, all because I had access to Isabel. Isabel knew that that combination of oral and extremity spasms was in a very limited group, and it really targeted our tests so that we didn't just run every test that was known to man. We could start targeting our tests and getting test done that were very specific.

I think Isabel is really beneficial for the physicians because we went into medicine to help people, and it's not very satisfying when they walk out of the room and we don't know what they have. So it helps with physician satisfaction. It helps with your perception of quality. From the patient's standpoint, they're much happier if they have the right diagnosis. I think, in many respects, it helps you not only be a better doctor, but feel better about the care that you give, that you're doing the right thing, for the right patient, at the right time.