Last week, VisualDx released an update with several exciting additions including negative findings, additional languages, changes to location of skin findings, and opioid prescribing resources, including information for patients, and more image captions.
Negative findings now available in the workup
Users have let us know that they want to be able to narrow their differential by entering negative findings that may quickly rule out some diagnoses. We’re pleased to announce that this new feature is in this update of VisualDx. We will be adding more negative findings in future releases. Now, for instance, when entering findings for a patient’s rash you can enter “no itch”, which may rule out a number of possible diagnoses and create a better differential result. 10 negative finds are now available:
- No itch
- No sore throat
- No skin findings
- No neurologic findings
- No HEENT findings
- No respiratory findings
- No cardiovascular findings
- No gastrointestinal findings
- No musculoskeletal findings
- No medication use (prescription or OTC)
A few important notes:
- Negative findings cannot be entered from the homepage (i.e. a negative finding cannot be your chief complaint)
- When you enter one of the more common chief complaints such as rash, fever, or cough, negative findings will show up as a tab in the workup. You will see it located toward the bottom/end of the list.
- Negative findings under the tab apply to whole body systems, as in No neurologic findings.
- Negative findings that are more specific symptoms, such as no itch or no sore throat, will be found next to their “positive” counterparts pruritis and sore throat.
- If you wish to enter a negative finding and cannot locate it in your workup, you can type it into the Additional Findings box.
Negative findings may not be available if they are not appropriate based on the chief complaint (i.e. if you have entered rash on the homepage, no skin findings will not be available in the negative findings tab).
Language additions
VisualDx has added Japanese and Portuguese (Brazilian) to supported languages. They join Spanish (European and Latin American), French, German, and Chinese translations of VisualDx.
Users can always search in English
Many users told us that they want to be able to search with English terms while using the language of their choice. We are happy to report that this feature is now available! Now, for instance, you can enter an English term even if you have changed your overall language to Spanish, and see results returned in both languages. Choose the diagnosis or finding in either language to proceed. All headings and workup options will remain in the language of choice (in this case, Spanish).
Distribution/Body Location changes
You may have noticed that when you are doing a workup for multiple skin lesions (rash), the Location of skin findings tab has changed. You can now choose either a distribution or a body location. Under distribution, the icons are arranged in order of most common to least common (in standard reading order). In general, your differential strength will be higher if you choose a distribution rather than narrowing down to one or more specific body locations. Certainly, there are exceptions, so we recommend using your best clinical judgment.
New opioid prescribing resources
VisualDx aims to help health care professionals make informed therapy choices for patients in need of pain management. If the clinical information for a diagnosis has recommended management or therapy that includes an opioid, VisualDx will include a link to resources for opioid prescribing guidelines and nonopioid alternatives. For example, clavicle fracture includes the link under Therapy, while sickle cell anemia includes it under Management Pearls. You can also access these resources and other public health information from VisualDx here.
Image captions
Over the past few months, we have been working hard to add more captions to images presented in VisualDx. Chances are you have run across quite a few already. Thanks to the tireless efforts of our editorial team and physician contributors, we now have captions for over 10,000 images.
*All these user-feature changes are currently available (as of December 2018) in the website application. Some of the features are available in the iOS and Android apps with a full implementation expected in the coming weeks.
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