A Rhode Island doctor has developed a new diagnostic tool to help fight against Ebola.

The research by physician Adam Levine could help doctors determine what a patient’s risk is for contract Ebola before lab results are available, and the tool was developed based on his time in Liberia working with the International Medical Corps, according to a Providence Journal report.

Levine currently works as an emergency medicine physician at Rhode Island Hospital and the Miriam Hospital, and he has served as a professor at Brown University. In a paper published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine, he described the tool, which could address problems with diagnosing Ebola because of its generic symptoms and the fact that it takes up to three days for test results to be finished.

Levin said he was seeking to address a “lag time” between when a case is suspected and when it is confirmed, which leaves doctors with a difficult decision: place the patient in an area with confirmed Ebola patients to protect healthy people, or keep the patient separate in case he or she doesn’t have Ebola?

Levine, who is just 35, has long involved involved himself in humanitarian emergencies such as natural disasters and military conflicts, and has served in Haiti and Sudan.

He said his first action upon returning from Liberia was to start examining the data to see if there was a better way to respond to Ebola in the future, and he was surprised at the lack of literature on the disease.

His new method uses an “Ebola Prediction Score,” which is more sophisticated than current methods of using up to 14 symptoms to determine whether or not someone is suspect or not suspect. His method focuses on six factors which are weighted differently, and include whether or not the patient had contact with an Ebola sufferer, and if he or she has abdominal pain, difficulty swallowing, diarrhea, muscle pain, and loss of appetite.