On September 25^th, 2014, a 42 year old Liberian man in the U.S. visiting family fell ill and went to a Dallas, Texas hospital for treatment. He told the nurse that he had fever and abdominal pain and was from a West African country that was in the midst of an Ebola outbreak. The nurse duly noted this in their state of the art electronic health record (EHR) system and passed him along to the ER physician. He was sent home with antibiotics.  Eleven days later he became the first person in the U.S. to die of the Ebola virus and set up an epidemiological nightmare. Continue reading →