The need for an effective diagnostic aid is more than amply illustrated by the case of Isabel Maude - the raison d'être behind the Isabel project:

In April 1999, four days after contracting chicken pox, three year old Isabel was transported under police escort from her local hospital to the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) at St Mary's Hospital, Paddington - a centre for life-threatening diseases for children. Here she suffered multiple organ failure including cardiac arrest and was on life support in PICU for nearly 4 weeks followed by a further month in a ward. Her life was in extreme danger and the potential of brain damage was high. All this because her local GP and hospital A&E unit, both of whom were contacted and visited on a number of occasions in the days leading to her hospitalisation, failed to recognise her critical and very obvious symptoms or appreciate that something as common as Chicken Pox could have such severe complications.

She was finally diagnosed as suffering from toxic shock and necrotising fasciitis (known by the media as the flesh-eating bug). All these are rare, but nonetheless acknowledged and documented complications of Chicken Pox. Had research on the potential complications of chicken pox been quickly accessible, Isabel would have been recognised as a very sick child, rather than being sent home with a bottle of paracetamol, thereby preventing much of the trauma she then had to experience over the ensuing 2 months. The legacy of Isabel's two-month stay is a large wound on her tummy with the prospect of extensive plastic surgery in years to come (see article in 'The Times').

Rather than take legal action, (and add to the NHS' already hefty litigation bill), Isabel's parents sought the help of a number of high profile medical consultants in establishing the Isabel website, with the hopes of preventing further cases of "clinical ignorance", the term their local hospital openly admitted to. The first step was to find software capable of understanding medical texts sufficiently to produce an accurate diagnosis. Jason Maude, who had been following the meteoric rise of Autonomy Corporation, approached Autonomy's CEO, Dr Mike Lynch, to ascertain whether its software could handle sophisticated medical diagnosis. Lynch, who has since agreed to be a Patron of the Isabel Medical Charity, offered to donate the Autonomy software with the purpose of setting up a diagnostic website.

The project then attracted the attention of Dr Joseph Britto, one of Isabel's Paediatric Consultants at St Mary's who, as a co-founder and Trustee, went on to assemble a team of specialists from hospitals throughout the UK who now form The Isabel Medical Charity's Editorial and Validation Boards as well as an Advisory Board which includes representatives from the leading Medical Think Tanks in the UK.