GIDEON is the world's premier global infectious disease knowledge management tool. It is an easy to use online application that helps you diagnose infectious diseases and stay up to date on the latest trends in epidemiology and treatment.

The data in GIDEON are accessed and collated through a system of computer macros and dedicated source lists developed over the past 15 years. A monthly search of Medline is conducted against a listing of all GIDEON key words, and titles / abstracts of interest are reviewed. All available national Health Ministry publications [print and electronic] are scanned, as are standard publications of WHO and CDC.

GIDEON has been designed to follow the practical aspects of Clinical Infectious Diseases. As such, it does not contain a number of diseases which are clearly 'infectious' ... but rarely treated by the ID clinician. Thus, you will not find the following in GIDEON:

You need a compatible web browser - , Internet Explorer, Netscape, Safari, Opera or Opera Mini for phones and PDAs. To view maps, the Flash plug-in is required. For users without access to the Internet, GIDEON is also available on CD.

Gideon was first rated on list number 8/93, after 176 games, and its rating was given as 2319 (+59, -53). You'll recall that this is to be read fully as "with 95% probability, the true rating lies between 2378 and 2266". After 393 games, Gideon's rating is 2280 (+37, -35), and we cannot see that these two results are not to be in accordance with each other.

GIDEON is designed specifically for human disease, and we are unaware of a parallel program for animals.

After installing GIDEON CD and trying to run a different application, the application won't start and I get an error message saying: "This application uses CTL3D32.DLL, which is not the correct version. This version of CTL3D32.DLL is designed only for Windows '95 systems.

Everything relevant published in CDC's Emerging Infectious Diseases is referenced in GIDEON with links back to the source

a single, Infectious Disease is responsible for the signs and symptoms entered. Non-infectious diseases may also produce fever, leukocytosis, etc. all clinical findings are causally related to the Infectious Disease in question. Clinical findings which predate the infection or are related to an underlying disease should not be entered in the Signs / symptoms list. Seemingly long and irrelevant Differential Diagnosis lists result from failure to enter all positive AND NEGATIVE clinical findings.

GIDEON is available only in English. Some of the synonyms for diseases, countries and drugs are in other languages. The personal notes accept any language that works with a browser.

GIDEON web version always has the latest GIDEON information, updated weekly, and is accessible from any computer connected to the Internet. GIDEON CD version is updated quarterly, runs on Windows computers and does not require an internet connection. Both versions offer the same basic feature set, although new features such as maps, graphs and images are only available on the web version. Unless Internet access is unavailable, we recommend GIDEON for the web.

Yes, since all sources are all peer-reviewed and are backed by scientific evidence - most are considered the premier scientific sources. Poor, uncontrolled, or poorly-analyzed studies cannot appear in these publications. This also holds for websites used in maintaining GIDEON. Virtually all are governmental sites. Reputable computer lists in the field are used, in a manner which fits the standards of evidenced-based medicine.

Most diseases are covered from the 1920's. There are smallpox graphs that start in the 1880's to 1890's (Egypt and Japan), and outbreaks covered from from as early as 1770 (anthrax), 1793 (botulism), 1832 (cholera), 1850 (dengue). GIDEON is updated weekly, see updates. "Real-time" may be used as a descriptive term relative to the typical publishing cycle of months and years.

In addition to published materials, GIDEON relies on end users to provide corrections and new information which ends up in the next update. Custom notes are a way to keep information that is specific to an individual account or institution.

GIDEON access is available on most mobile phones and PDA's. See the step by step setup instructions. Otherwise, print required information. A blank signs and symptoms form is also available online.

The diseases listed are compatible with the signs and symptoms selected, but are not endemic to chosen country. This tool was developed in consultation with the World Health Organization, and is designed to identify the initial cases of known diseases in new settings; ie, SARS in Canada (2003), Monkeypox in the United States (2003) West Nile fever in the United States (1999), Japanese spotted fever in Korea (2004), etc. For an example of use, see First Case Scenario.

The Disease diagnosis and Microbiology identification modules in GIDEON are powered by a Bayesian matrix which calculates probability based on the formula: In other words, when the user enters a list of symptoms and country of acquisition for a patient, GIDEON does the following:

Entire books are written on the treatment of endocarditis, meningitis, urinary tract infection, bacterial pneumonia and other generic infections. This is well beyond the scope of GIDEON. The best source for this type of material has always been standard texts and review articles. The Clinical Notes in GIDEON do provide links to major journal reviews, including diagnosis and treatment of endocarditis, etc.

GIDEON generates a ranked ID list for bacteria based on the occurrence of phenotypic tests times the likelihood for each relative taxon in clinical material ["prior prevalence"]. Phenotypic data used for ID are taken from Bergey's Manual and other standard tests, J Clin Microbiol. Int J Syst Evolut Microbiol, and other relevant journals.

GIDEON has several features for administrators, including Setting up PubMed links, Checking access log files and Managing Usernames/passwords for non-IP authenticated access. When using a unique URL to access GIDEON you have to bookmark the unique URL, or add it into the existing bookmark.

Signs and symptoms incorporated in GIDEON are those generally used by specialists in the field. Most are easy to assess, and discriminative in the consideration or elimination of large groups of individual diseases. Similarly, the phenotypic tests listed in the Microbiology module are useful in the identification of large subgroups of bacteria, or the identification of individual major taxa.

This problem has existed long before the creation of GIDEON. Several disclaimers in the program warn the user that non-infectious diseases may mimic infection, and that the program is not intended as a replacement for sound clinical judgment.

Vital signs consist of temperature, pulse, blood pressure and respiratory rate. The pulse rate can increase in any systemic infection; and fails to increase in over 20 infectious diseases [click + next to Fever = Relative bradycardia]. Any severe systemic infection may be associated with an increase in pulse or decrease in blood pressure. Although tachypnea and hypotension are useful prognostic indicators, neither is specific or helpful in differentiating among most of the diseases in GIDEON.

When we started out, we made an editorial decision to include only diseases treated by Infectious Diseases clinicians. As such, you will not find such infectious diseases as tropical spasitic paraparesis, hairy cell leukemia, BSE, Kaposi's sarcoma, Kuru, uterine cervical dysplasia, gastritis / peptic ulcer, multifocal leukoencephalopathy, viral leukemias / lymphomas, etc.