Rapidly screening for Ebola at U.S. hospitals has just gotten easier thanks, in part, to military-funded research. Salt Lake City-based BioFire announced over the weekend that they had received emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration for hospital workers to use the Bio-Threat E array (a special kit) on the company's polymerase chain reaction (PCR) machine, the FilmArray, to screen for Ebola.

It’s basically the same machine that the U.S. military is using to fight the disease in Africa, although the tests are slightly different. On Saturday, the FDA had authorized the Ebola screening kit, the Bio-Threat E, for clinical use under the Emergency Use Authorization. The Dallas hospital that treated Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian man who became the first individual to die of Ebola in the United States, but was not authorized to use it to test patients showing symptoms of Ebola.

Health workers in more than 300 hospitals around the country, including 30 lab hospitals in the New York tri-state area, use the machine to screen for a wide variety of illnesses such as listeria, influenza and various other respiratory and intestinal sicknesses. With the right diagnostic kit in place, the FilmArray can also be used to screen for Ebola, delivering results in about an hour with higher than 90 percent certainty. Technically speaking, it may be able to do so days before an Ebola carrier develops a fever and becomes contagious, though the FDA has not authorized its use in patients that are not showing symptoms. One of the hospitals scheduled to receive the machine for that purpose is New York's Bellevue.

[READ MORE: Dallas Hospital Had the Ebola Screening That the Military Is Using in Africa]

Doctors and medical staff at Emory University in Atlanta were able to use it to diagnose U.S. doctor Kent Brantly and aid worker Nancy Writebol because the machine there had a research designation.

“We understand the importance of quickly diagnosing Ebola cases in the U.S. and abroad. FDA is committed to working with companies in the most expedited manner to increase the availability of authorized diagnostic tests for Ebola for emergency use during this epidemic,” an FDA spokesperson told Defense One.