What is Epivista®

Epivista® is an electronic treatment calendar that includes the medical record for seizure sufferers. Epivista® was developed with the goal of facilitating and guiding treatment and optimizing therapy.

The longer epilepsy has existed, the more complex its course becomes. However it is indispensable to optimal treatment that all integral data present be considered for every treatment decision. This begins with the diagnosis and its substantiation and includes the frequency of seizures in the course of the disease as well as the influence of previous treatment measures.

Epivista® provides the clinical course data that is relevant to the treatment in a concise form. Searching through piles of medical records is no longer necessary. Courses of epilepsy of any length become easily manageable with Epivista®.

The heart of Epivista® is the treatment diagram in which seizures and treatment are represented in a graph as a function of time (treatment course diagram).

At a single glance, the behaviour of the seizure frequency per day can be recognized from the time interval represented. The reaction of the seizures to the treatment can be precisely appraised, which cannot be achieved with any other known technique. The time axis can be adjusted at your discretion. The entire course over the time period of many years can be represented on a single screen or, if desired, the course during any treatment interval, when it is important to see details regarding seizure frequency and its relationship to therapy at a high time resolution.

Serum levels of anti-epileptics, the date of operations, menstrual periods for women, Status epileptici, and special events during the disease course, as well as height and weight, and an indicator of general health condition can be blended into the graphics. With this tool a versatile treatment course diagram is created that represents the principle characteristics of the individual epilepsy.

Treatment course diagrams produced with Epivista® give immediate answers to elementary questions related to the management of treatment that must be considered:

What medications have been used up to now?
Have they been effective?
Were they administered at a sufficient dosage?
Is there any indication of tolerance development to individual medications?
Was the choice of medication and any combinations of medications commensurate with the diagnosis?
Which medications should be considered ineffective under concrete conditions?
Were ineffective medications discontinued?
What was the effect on seizure frequency of discontinuation of "ineffective" medications?
How long does it take before the effect of a medication can be estimated?
Are there indications for a change in seizure frequency that is independent of medication?
Has the effect of the medication or the response threshold changed over the course of the disease for patients taking medications?
And finally: Do the seizures show a resistence to a lege artis pharmacotherapy?

Any written records usually contained in medical records are also possible with Epivista®. Texts are filed clearly arranged under keywords. They can be merged into editable epicrises and printed or exported just like the treatment diagrams.

Regular checking of the process of epilepsies using treatment diagrams makes critical scrutinization of the details of concrete treatment strategies and therapeutic practices easier. The management of therapy which is the sole responsibility of the physician, requires that he takes an independent, solidly based position regarding therapy recommendations and claims about the effects of medication. In individual cases that is already achieved with the treatment diagram. An Epivista® evaluation function (superimposed diagram) additionally allows the immediate and effortless comparison of therapy results on several patients over any chosen time frame. With this, the physician can gain his therapeutic experience free of suggestive influences, vague impressions, and unclear recollections of numeric principles.

The instructions contain information about further Epivista® functions.

Epivista® can be used by the doctor and the patient. In outpatient practice, the division of labor has proven itself: the patient enters the seizures and the medication that has actually been taken, the dates of the menstrual period for women, notes his condition, and makes supplementary entries (for example, about the seizures). The physician records the anamnesis, all findings, the serum levels, and his comments about the progression or course of the disease. The reconciliation of the dates between physician and patient is easily possible. Epivista® can also be operative in the clinic, physician's practice, or epilepsy outpatient clinic, without the patient having to make entries himself. Likewise, it is possible to use Epivista® exclusively from the patient side. The treatment diagrams in this scenario are printed out and presented to the physician.

After several year's experience with 3 versions of Epivista® for workstation use, the programme is now available as an internet version. Therefore it is accessible to a wide circle of users. Data exchange between physician and patient has become easier. A clever security concept prevents any unauthorized access to the data.

G. Rabending