Isabel Healthcare Blog

Meningococcal Infections: The Ongoing Need for Early Diagnosis in the UK (2026 Update)

mandy.tomlinson@isabelhealthcare.com (Mandy Tomlinson) — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 20:58:25 GMT

Meningococcal infections (including meningococcal meningitis, meningococcal septicaemia, and invasive meningococcal disease) are caused by Neisseria meningitidis, which commonly resides in the nasopharynx. In most individuals, carriage is asymptomatic; however, in a small proportion, the bacteria invade the bloodstream or central nervous system, leading to rapidly progressive and potentially fatal illness.

Isabel DDx Companion with ChatGPT Integration - to help you diagnose even faster

mandy.tomlinson@isabelhealthcare.com (Mandy Tomlinson) — Wed, 22 Oct 2025 13:00:02 GMT

At Isabel Healthcare, we’ve always been driven by one goal: to make clinical reasoning faster, smarter, and safer for every clinician.

Virtual Triage: Do more questions lead to better patient outcomes?

Jason Maude — Tue, 03 May 2022 11:30:00 GMT

One of the common misconceptions related to virtual triage / symptom checker tools is that the more questions the system asks, the more accurate the list of possible conditions / triage level recommendations will be and so, overall, the conclusion is that it is more thorough and, therefore, a better tool. If you are looking to provide your patients with a symptom checker/triage tool or are a patient looking to use one, this may intuitively make sense, but you would be very wrong. For virtual triage tools, more really is less.

Webinar: Using Virtual Triage To Transform Patient Access

Don Bauman — Tue, 12 Apr 2022 18:30:40 GMT

Outdated contact centers are posing problems for today's health systems. As longer hold times collide with demands for a better experience from patients and caregivers, systems are turning to virtual triage.

About 30 percent of patient calls to access centers require some triage, but the non-clinical agents who handle these calls aren't always equipped to determine what level of care a patient needs. Even more challenging, most patients want a self-service, digital experience without calling the contact center at all. Join this webinar to learn how two health systems are using evidence-based scheduling and virtual triage to address these challenges and more.

Key learning points:

How patients use virtual triage to access the right care and reduce calls to the contact center
How scheduling agents use evidence-based scheduling to find the right care while speaking with patients by phone
Real-world virtual triage implementation experiences and results from Banner Health and Ardent Health Services

Webinar: How chatbots improve patient experience

Don Bauman — Fri, 22 Oct 2021 15:00:00 GMT

Join your HCIC colleagues for an exclusive look at measurable consumer engagement, patient access and labor productivity gains using chat in a complex health system.

Bryan Yarbrough, Ardent Health’s Corporate Director of Integrated Services, Marketing, will share the goals and results in their chat pilot the business reasons for expanding chat across the entire Ardent Health enterprise.

Ardent Health knew consumers wanted to converse digitally for triage to the right care, appointment scheduling, and other inquiries traditionally handled by phone. The team decided to validate live chat and chatbots in a two-market pilot to meet these needs. MedChat was selected in a far-reaching evaluation of chat, chatbot, and advanced automation platforms.

In 76 days, the MedChat pilot generated 7,000 chats, half of which were new patients and 90% were fulfilled using chatbots and AI without agent assistance required at all. The documented labor cost savings and improved patient experience resulted in Ardent expanding chat to the rest of its markets.

Save your spot for the:

Postpartum Mental Health Awareness - Isabel Healthcare

mandy.tomlinson@isabelhealthcare.com (Mandy Tomlinson) — Wed, 05 May 2021 17:06:55 GMT

In a recent blog we covered mental health conditions which can occur during pregnancy, but there are also some mental health conditions which can occur after the woman has given birth. The postpartum period is up to a year after giving birth, If a woman has experienced mental ill health in the past, then she is more likely to become mentally unwell during pregnancy or in this postpartum period than at other times in her life.

Maternal Mental Health Awareness During Pregnancy - Isabel Healthcare

mandy.tomlinson@isabelhealthcare.com (Mandy Tomlinson) — Wed, 05 May 2021 16:24:06 GMT

Pregnancy is portrayed as a time of happiness and emotional well-being, and for many that is their experience, but evidence shows mental illness can affect women in pregnancy. Pregnancy impacts women from many angles with regards to their physical and mental health and also the baby’s health. There is much debate over whether you are more or less likely to have ill mental health during pregnancy. Statistically, if a woman has had mental ill health in the past or at the time she falls pregnant, then she is more likely to have mental ill health during pregnancy or in the year after giving birth (postpartum) than at other times in her life. Overall, however, mental health admissions and completed suicide are less common in pregnancy than at other times. Indeed, some women who have had mental ill health in the past remain well during pregnancy, everyone is different and have varying triggers for becoming unwell.

Can Symptom Checkers be bad for your health?

Jason Maude — Tue, 02 Mar 2021 13:03:19 GMT

The number of symptom checkers designed for patient use has mushroomed over the last few years.

Post-Acute Sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC) / Long COVID – What do we know?

mandy.tomlinson@isabelhealthcare.com (Mandy Tomlinson) — Thu, 25 Feb 2021 15:00:00 GMT

As we near the 14-month anniversary since the first outbreak of COVID-19 was identified in December 2019, it is time to draw attention to the people who had COVID-19 and have been left with prolonged and sometimes new symptoms which they have been struggling with after the disease.

Coronavirus Disease 2019 / COVID-19 Symptoms

mandy.tomlinson@isabelhealthcare.com (Mandy Tomlinson) — Tue, 14 Jul 2020 15:00:00 GMT

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an infection caused by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) [1]. An outbreak of a pneumonia of unknown cause was identified in Wuhun City, Hubei Province, China at the end of December 2019 [2]. China shared the genetic sequence of COVID-19 in January 2020 and the World Health Organization (WHO) also reported a limited number of cases of human-to-human transmission [3]. Over the next 7 weeks, cases of COVID-19 were found in other countries showing widespread human to human transmission and many deaths resulted from respiratory failure. On 11 March 2020 WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic.