Knowing an HIV- positive patient's viral load could be the difference between life and death. And thanks to a new hi-tech software tool South African doctors and nurses will be able to better manage the viral loads of the 3,5 million HIV patients on ARVS and speedily identify and intervene in problem areas. The tool visualises the data from five-million “viral load” tests that HIV-positive South Africans have a year. Viral load refers to the amount of HI-virus present in an infected persons system.About 3.5 million South Africans are on antiretroviral treatment, and usually have one to two tests a year that measures if the virus has stopped replicating in response to their medicines. A low viral load means the person is healthy and non-infectious.The new software has taken these viral load tests result and sorted them into a searchable district, provincial and national data base.“It is real time data that could be viewed as a heat map showing hotspots where intervention could be needed,” said Dr Sergio Carmona, a pathologist at the National Health Laboratory Service.The tool known as a dashboard was funded by PEPFAR and USAID and developed through Right to Care, the National Health Laboratory Service, and the Boston University in the US.The National Health Laboratory Service does more than 80% of all tests in country, making it possible to make a huge tool to mine and visualise data said Carmona. Without proper monitoring patients develop resistance to the drugs requiring more expensive medicines or become ill. Carmona said the tool would be made available to nurses at clinics so they could see who in their patient list was not responding well to treatment and needed to be called back to the clinic.Stable patients are delivered ARV medicine reducing the number of clinic visits they need and reducing clinic overcrowding. ..