Marjorie Pollack, an editor at ProMED, recently speculated about the cause of deaths in Zambia using GIDEON:

Speculation on a differential diagnosis with the symptoms given above — vomiting and backache — is a “fun” challenge. Checking the possible list of infectious agents that would produce the clinical spectrum of a cluster of severe, fatal infections associated with vomiting and backache in Zambia using the GIDEON (Global infectious disease and epidemiology network) database, comes up with a list of the following possible diagnoses (and probability of occurrence) — which includes viral, bacterial, and parasitic diseases:

Rift Valley fever (30.8 percent probability), leptospirosis (27.5 percent), influenza (2.4 percent), malaria (11.5 percent), meningitis — bacterial (9.2 percent), relapsing fever (3.2 percent), septicemia –bacterial (1.8 percent), legionellosis (1.4 percent). Other diseases mentioned with a less than one percent probability include: typhoid and enteric fever, _Bunyaviridae_ infections — misc., rabies, tuberculosis, typhus — endemic, _Streptococcus suis_ infection, yellow fever, trypanosomiasis — African, Q-fever, brucellosis, yersiniosis, ornithosis, trichinosis, infectious mononucleosis or EBV (Epstein-Barr virus) infection, poliomyelitis, toxoplasmosis.

Even more fun is the possible list of other diseases that might produce the same type of cluster, but anywhere in the world (not necessarily seen in Zambia at present). This list (according to the GIDEON network would include: hantavirus infections — Old World, Ebola, Lassa fever, typhus — scrub, dengue, hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, and Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever to mention a few.

In 2005 an agricultural expert from Israel went for 6 days to India to participate in a farming project. He returned to Israel, and the following morning developed fever, headache, vomiting and muscle pain. Read the latest case of the month, Agriculture Expert in India, about how GIDEON helped save this person’s life.

ProMED provided another great example of how GIDEON can be used to diagnose an illness in Cote d’Ivoire:

When one checks GIDEON (Global Infectious Disease and Epidemiology Network) for the clinical picture associated with contact with animals, one gets 3 main possibilities — Q fever, ornithosis, and bunyaviridae. Of the bunyaviridae family, one does think of Rift Valley fever (RVF) as consistent with this clinical picture, but the involvement of poultry rules this out, as the RVF virus does not affect avians. Gideon also gives a “1st case scenario”, where it “ignores” the geographic location of the outbreak in the event that this is a new geographic extension of an otherwise known pathogen. In this case, the GIDEON program suggested Congo-Crimean hemorrhagic fever (CCHF).

Training videos for each of GIDEON’s features offer step by step tutorials and examples on how to maximize your use of GIDEON. The videos are flash based (like YouTube), so will work in any browser. All you have to do is turn up your speakers or put on your headphones and click the start button below the video.

We’ve received frequent request for one page examples of how to use GIDEON. “Case of the month” is an area of the website that demonstrates various aspects of GIDEON. Each case includes a PDF document that can be used as a handout.
For example, the case “West Nile Fever” – Staying in Real Time shows how to use GIDEON to keep track of the latest information regarding West Nile Fever globally.