Conventionally, the approach to providing users with ongoing communications regarding a plan or other repetitive course of action may leave the majority of the work to the user. The smartphone and other personal computing devices are everywhere and are not being properly utilized when offering users with options for maintaining a course of treatment or a set of goals. The lack of action taken by the professional service provider and/or the user can lead to personal health problems and lost revenue for providers, insurers, etc., as well as the users.
Example embodiments of the present application provide at least a first example method of the present application includes at least one of linking a mobile device and a health care provider server, requesting a patient response to a message including a query of a health-related issue, wherein the response is at least one of biometric, objective and subjective, receiving the patient response to the query, determining based on at least one predetermined alert criteria an urgency level of the patient response based on the health-related issue, tagging the patient response as an urgent tagged response if the determined urgency level exceeds a predetermined urgency threshold of the patient for the health-related issue based on the at least one predetermined alert criteria and providing the request and the urgent tagged response to a healthcare provider.
A second example embodiment of the present application provide at least a non-transitory computer readable medium comprising instructions that, when read by a processor, cause the processor to perform at least one of linking a mobile device and a health care provider server, requesting from a patient pertaining to a health-related issue a response to a query, wherein the response is at least one of biometric, objective and subjective, receiving the response to the query, determining based on at least one predetermined alert criteria an urgency level of the response based on the patient health-related issue, tagging the response as an urgent tagged response if the determined urgency level exceeds a predetermined urgency threshold of the patient for the health-related issue based on the at least one predetermined alert criteria and providing the request and the urgent tagged response a healthcare provider.
A further example embodiment of the present application provides at least a system, comprising at least one cloud-based processor, and at least one memory electrically coupled to the at least one processor and storing an application, the processor performing at least one operation to link a mobile device and a health care provider server, request from a patient pertaining to a health-related issue a response to a query, wherein the response is at least one of biometric, objective and subjective, receive the response to the query, determine based on at least one predetermined alert criteria an urgency level of the patient response based on the health-related issue, tag the response as an urgent tagged response if the determined urgency level exceeds a predetermined urgency threshold of the patient for the health-related issue based on the at least one predetermined alert criteria and provide the request and the urgent tagged response a healthcare provider.
It will be readily understood that the components of the present application, as generally described and illustrated in the figures herein, may be arranged and designed in a wide variety of different configurations. Thus, the following detailed description of the embodiments of a method, apparatus, and system, as represented in the attached figures, is not intended to limit the scope of the application as claimed, but is merely representative of selected embodiments of the application.
The features, structures, or characteristics of the application described throughout this specification may be combined in any suitable manner in one or more embodiments. For example, the usage of the phrases “example embodiments”, “some embodiments”, or other similar language, throughout this specification refers to the fact that a particular feature, structure, or characteristic described in connection with the embodiment may be included in at least one embodiment of the present application. Thus, appearances of the phrases “example embodiments”, “in some embodiments”, “in other embodiments”, or other similar language, throughout this specification do not necessarily all refer to the same group of embodiments, and the described features, structures, or characteristics may be combined in any suitable manner in one or more embodiments.
Examples of treatment plans and other objectives may include a care management service for assessment of patient medical needs. The system and application may ensure timely receipt of all recommended treatment actions, drugs, third party services and over a designated period. Also, referrals to other providers and additional services may provide emergency visits, discharge instructions, nursing facility operations, and home health care functions. In operation, the procedure may begin with the medical treatment provider creating a treatment plan or ‘journey’ for each patient. Each journey is generally for a single chronic condition or objective. One patient may have multiple journeys integrated into a single application. Also, the journeys may originate from various providers and service entities. The journey will provide the healthcare provider with biometric, objective and subjective data to enable evidence-based medical decisions. As an example, the biometric data may be glucometer data collected from a blue tooth enabled device and made available to the physician, objective data such as whether the patient visited an emergency room or hospital and subjective data such as how the patient is feeling.
In addition, while the term “message” has been used in the description of embodiments of the present application, the application may be applied to many types of network data, such as, packet, frame, datagram, etc. For purposes of this application, the term “message” also includes packet, frame, datagram, and any equivalents thereof. Furthermore, while certain types of messages and signaling are depicted in exemplary embodiments of the application, the application is not limited to a certain type of message, and the application is not limited to a certain type of signaling.
According to example embodiments, a user device, such as a smartphone, cellular phone, tablet device, laptop or other computing device with a memory and processor, may communicate with another computing device and/or a server to provide an integrated communication platform.
Example embodiments provide a computer system programmed to use automated messaging from medical offices to specific patients. The application is not limited to medical procedures and functions and may be used with other configurations for various purposes and services benefitting the end user. Example embodiments include three main computer systems, which work together in an integrated manner including a management platform that controls set-up, functionality, activity reporting, and messaging credentials for the users. An administrative platform which the doctor and doctor's office can access via the internet, and a mobile application that a patient can download into a mobile computer device such as a smartphone or tablet. The management platform acts as the nexus of the system sending outgoing messages on behalf of the healthcare provider and forwarding patient responses to the healthcare provider's administrative platform. The medical office may have a specific identification that is stored within the management platform.
The integrated platform provides a way of checking-in with a patient at prescribed intervals during times between office visits and when undergoing certain treatment that the doctor is providing or overseeing for the patient. The patient dialog may gather relevant information about the status of the patient's conditions or recovery and can be modified or tailored to specifically meet the dialog requirements of the treating physician. Once initiated by the doctor's office, the application operates in an autonomous manner by delivering messages to the patient to prompt responses if needed. The application functions are monitored to assure that the patient replies to the information requests from the doctor, otherwise a no-response alert is sent to the doctor's office. The interactions are recorded and time-stamped, providing an auditable record of the dialog, suitable for insurance billing purposes. The application can also support biometric information from devices that measure certain body functions, such as diabetes glucometers, or blood pressure cuffs, or any sensory readable health care metric. The application may also create a longitudinal record of information for the patient to illustrate week-to-week trends.
Response Alert Tags
As has been stated earlier, this method and system is utilized when a patient visits a healthcare provider for an illness/condition which is diagnosed and treated. The treatment occurs over a period and is referred to as a journey. The system tracks a patient's progress along the journey for that illness or condition and solicits health information from the patient at clinically relevant intervals, across an extended time period to enable evidence based medicine. The specific information sought, the intervals, and the time period duration apply to specific conditions or illnesses for which a specific patient is being treated.
This solicitation for patient information may take the form of queries sent to the patient for information when the responses to those queries are delivered to the patient's healthcare provider (e.g. physician). The patient's journey may have several waypoints occurring at the clinically relevant intervals. The responses to the queries at these waypoints are meant to determine a patient's progress and status and to present to the healthcare provider evidence upon which to conduct evidence-based medicine. The responses are collected by the system and measured against historical norms for the patient and/or expected answers for similar patients on similar journeys.
In the event of an unexpected response to a query at that waypoint, the response is treated as notable. Notable events may be considered non-urgent or may be considered urgent or emergent. This divergence from the expected response outcome is graded for severity or urgency. If the severity or urgency of the response exceeds a predetermined threshold for that patient for that journey for that illness or condition at that waypoint, an urgent tag is created and sent to the healthcare provider. The grading may be one of an immediate medical action advisory, a follow-up advisory and a medical history review advisory
The information requested in the query is sent in a structured format to allow ease in answering and the response data is delivered to the healthcare provider in a structured data format to facilitate ease in analysis and trend detection.
The response alert tag is a feature that “tags” certain responses provided by the patient as information that requires follow-up or special notice by the patient's healthcare provider. The tag may indicate a level of severity or urgency, thus alerting the provider to information that may need immediate medical action, additional follow-up with the patient or a specific review of the patient's medical history.
The tag may be communicated to the provider through multiple channels depending upon circumstance and urgency and in an immediate manner or in a weekly aggregated format depending in part upon urgency.
Workflow instructions may be electronically linked to a tag, so that the specific healthcare provider that reviews the data will have guidance about the actions to be taken when a tag appears and any escalation of clinical review that might be appropriate.
Each patient for each illness or condition is interacted with by the system at intervals which are relevant to that illness or condition and the queries are sent to determine the patient's progress or status. The received response to the query is measured against an expected response, and anomalies or offsets are noted. If these response anomalies or offsets are larger than a predetermined amount, an urgent or severe issue may need to be addressed. Thus, the response is tagged as an urgent tagged response and may be sent utilizing a priority delivery schedule, a priority delivery indicia on the response and may be made to a priority delivery list determined by the healthcare provider. The response may be tagged as non-urgent if the determined urgency level does not meet the predetermined urgency threshold of the patient for the health-related issue.
The structured format allows an overlap of queries so that the patient is not answering multiple identical queries at any one point in time. Additionally, the structured format allows the data to be collected and logged in a structured format and assembled for future review both by the practitioner and the patient to determine trends.
In one example a method, includes requesting via a cloud-based system from a patient response to a query and receiving the response to the health-related query, determining an urgency level of the response based on the patient health-related issue and tagging the response as an urgent tagged response if the determined urgency level exceeds a predetermined urgency threshold of the patient for the health-related issue.
The method also includes providing the urgent tagged response to the health provider, where the urgent tagged response may be sent utilizing a priority delivery schedule, a priority delivery indicia for the response and may be made to a priority delivery list.
The method may also include tagging the response as non-urgent if the determined urgency level does not meet the predetermined urgency threshold of the patient for the health-related issue.
If the determined urgency level of the response is such that it rises to the level of a medical emergency, then the primary care physician may be immediately notified as well as emergency services such as 911 and if deemed appropriate, dispatched to the location identified either by the patient or gathered from a location indicator in his mobile device. If the response is deemed critical, in situations where the primary physician is not immediately available, an emergency medical specialist may be placed in active direct communication with the patient. The system would make available to the first responder the query and response to provide context for the escalation.
The response may be graded as to the tagged urgency level of the response, where the grading is at least one of an immediate medical action advisory, a follow-up advisory and a medical history review advisory. A follow-on query may be sent based on the urgent tagged response to give the provider context to the urgent tagged response. As an example, if the patient responds that they have been to the emergency room (ER) that may trigger another set of queries about the ER visit to add context to the response. This second set of queries may determine whether the ER visit was related to conditions or illnesses related to the journey, or whether visit was for a condition unrelated to the journey, but still of interest to the healthcare provider.
In another example a cloud-based system links a mobile device and a healthcare provider server. The cloud-based system requests a response to a query from a patient pertaining to a health-related issue, receives the response to the query and determines an urgency level of the response based on the patient health-related issue. The system also tags the response as an urgent tagged response if the determined urgency level exceeds a predetermined urgency threshold of the patient for the health-related issue and provides the urgent tagged response to health provider.
The cloud-based system may receive via the mobile device a sensor signal provided by a medical device in response to the query. The medical device may be a blood pressure monitor, a glucometer, a pulse meter, a continuous positive airway pressure device, a heart monitor, an implanted medical device and the like.
The cloud-based system may receive via the mobile device an audio or text message indicating a medical distress condition in response to the query or may overhear the patient indicating a medical distress condition in conversations or texts in an unsolicited message.
The system may also interpret patient actions in regards to patient historical norms, such as, if the patient is overheard slurring his speech, he may be having a stroke, or if he is discussing that he has pressure in his chest or his left arm is numb, he may be having a heart attack. At this point the system may connect him directly to a medical specialist and take other appropriate action, such as determining his location and dispatching emergency services.
If there is an emergency issue the cloud-based system may contact or place the patient in contact with a medical technician 1014 in addition to notifying the healthcare provider by means of the healthcare provider's server 1016, the cloud-based system may issue a text or message to the healthcare provider. The communication route from the healthcare provider may be by means of mobile device 1018, computer 1020 or the like. The cloud-based system may directly connect the patient via to the patient's communication device 1012 to the healthcare provider under appropriate circumstances. Non-urgent issues are sent to the healthcare provider for later review.
A second example method is shown in
A first example method shown in
With respect to the timing of patient responses, the first example method may also include, awaiting the patient response to the message for a late response duration and categorizing the patient response if the patient response is received within the late response duration. If the patient response is not received within the late response duration the method further comprises sending a duplicate message and flagging the patient response as non-responsive if the patient response to the duplicate message is not received within a second late response duration.
The timing of the message dispatches associated with the treatment plan is partly governed by a trigger table. The method may include loading the trigger table having a set of trigger dates based on the treatment plan where the message dispatch is sent according to the set of trigger dates. The method may further include receiving a message start date and receiving an initialization message from a patient mobile device to initiate the treatment plan and to initialize the set of trigger dates in the trigger table.
A first example non-transitory computer readable medium 1300 comprising instructions associated with the tagging of responses that, when read by a processor, cause the processor to perform; linking 1310 a mobile device and a health care provider server, requesting 1312 from a patient pertaining to a health-related issue a response to a query, wherein the response is at least one of biometric, objective and subjective and receiving 1314 the response to the query. The processor then determines 1316 based on at least one predetermined alert criteria an urgency level of the response based on the patient health-related issue, tags 1318 the response as an urgent tagged response if the determined urgency level exceeds a predetermined urgency threshold of the patient for the health-related issue based on the at least one predetermined alert criteria and provides 1320 the request and the urgent tagged response a healthcare provider.
Most medical oversight is provided post-event in which a patient has been identified and is either currently in the throes of a medical condition or is recovering from a medical condition. In this example, a single patient is looked after by a group of people, this is a resource rich environment in which one patient has the attention of the medical community.
The issue that this application may provide a solution to is one that provides medical oversight to a large community, in essence to act as a fire lookout tower in a forest. In the case of a fire lookout tower, a small number of people are looking after a vast number of trees. When a problem is detected, the fire fighters are sent to that part of the forest to prevent a larger breakout. This solution is the medical analog to that illustration. In the medical case, we have a small number of highly trained personnel looking after an entire community. On a per person basis, this is a very medical resource restricted environment.
The two different environments have similar but different focuses. In a resource rich environment, the viewing equipment used is the equivalent of a microscope, whereas, in a resource restricted environment the viewing equipment utilized are binoculars. Although the medical questions asked may share a foundational basis, how those questions are asked and how the responses are analyzed fall along completely different tracks.
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought to the surface medical attention misallocation issues present in the current state of medical care. One issue that has been highlighted is overtreatment and unnecessary treatment of patients, including office visits based on the calendar rather than current health needs, which is also described as low value care. Additionally, the pandemic has focused attention on elective procedures, which has subsequently shown that the performance of the elective procedure has had no demonstrable beneficial effect or reduced the recurrence of subsequent doctor visits. This low value care may be defined as medical actions in which the potential for harm far outweighs possible beneficial effects. Low value care also uses up doctor time and appointments for patients that do not require immediate attention, while not scheduling patients with immediate needs, mostly because of a lack of awareness.
Another highlighted misallocation of medical attention has been detected in the current fee for service (FFS) model of medical payment—doctors are paid for specific work they do, unrelated to whether it is appropriate to a current patient need. While this FFS model, which requires doctors to perform certain tasks in certain very specific ways, may function in an age of a medically rich resource environment, it does not function well at all when providing community health services for many patients.
The present potential solution goes to the heart of the current medical misallocation issue, by using an automated approach for periodically checking on and assessing all patients with a specific condition. This process will find that the majority of patients are fine and require no attention at this time, and it focuses medical attention on those patients that require it. The potential solution allows a resource sparse medical team to leverage the patient's inputs in conjunction with medically programmed and adjusted logic to direct focus on those patients needing immediate care, while continually keeping an eye on the remainder of the patient pool.
The questions in this possible solution are specific to the patient's condition, the responses may be numeric or multiple choice and may be biometric, objective, subjective and requests. A biometric question would be one in which a number such as diastolic and systolic blood pressure are input, or a blood glucose level is input. An objective question pertains to facts such as “have you filled any new prescriptions in the past week?”, the answer of which is fact based and does not require patient interpretation or analysis. A subjective question would be one such as “please rate your mood over the last week” or “have you lost the sense of taste or smell over the last week?”. A request would be worded such as “would you like your doctor to contact you?”
The interpretation of the results is assembled in an array format that may be adjusted by the patient's doctor. The medical personnel in charge of the patient has the final say in how a response is interpreted and the medical weight given to the response. The triage is very simple, the highest alert level is the weight of the response, based on the input table any number or physician assigned emergency, critical, warning or nominal and tagged as such.
The operations of a method or algorithm described in connection with the embodiments disclosed herein may be embodied directly in hardware, in a computer program executed by a processor, or in a combination of the two. A computer program may be embodied on a computer readable medium, such as a storage medium. For example, a computer program may reside in random access memory (“RAM”), flash memory, read-only memory (“ROM”), erasable programmable read-only memory (“EPROM”), electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (“EEPROM”), registers, hard disk, a removable disk, a compact disk read-only memory (“CD-ROM”), or any other form of storage medium known in the art.
An exemplary storage medium may be coupled to the processor such that the processor may read information from, and write information to, the storage medium. In the alternative, the storage medium may be integral to the processor. The processor and the storage medium may reside in an application specific integrated circuit (“ASIC”). In the alternative, the processor and the storage medium may reside as discrete components. For example,
As illustrated in
Although an exemplary embodiment of the system, method, and computer readable medium of the present application has been illustrated in the accompanied drawings and described in the foregoing detailed description, it will be understood that the application is not limited to the embodiments disclosed, but is capable of numerous rearrangements, modifications, and substitutions without departing from the spirit or scope of the application as set forth and defined by the following claims. For example, the capabilities of the system of the various figures can be performed by one or more of the modules or components described herein or in a distributed architecture and may include a transmitter, receiver or pair of both. For example, all or part of the functionality performed by the individual modules, may be performed by one or more of these modules. Further, the functionality described herein may be performed at various times and in relation to various events, internal or external to the modules or components. Also, the information sent between various modules can be sent between the modules via at least one of: a data network, the Internet, a voice network, an Internet Protocol network, a wireless device, a wired device and/or via plurality of protocols. Also, the messages sent or received by any of the modules may be sent or received directly and/or via one or more of the other modules.
One skilled in the art will appreciate that a “system” could be embodied as a personal computer, a server, a console, a personal digital assistant (PDA), a cell phone, a tablet computing device, a smartphone or any other suitable computing device, or combination of devices. Presenting the above-described functions as being performed by a “system” is not intended to limit the scope of the present application in any way, but is intended to provide one example of many embodiments of the present application. Indeed, methods, systems and apparatuses disclosed herein may be implemented in localized and distributed forms consistent with computing technology.
It should be noted that some of the system features described in this specification have been presented as modules, in order to more particularly emphasize their implementation independence. For example, a module may be implemented as a hardware circuit comprising custom very large-scale integration (VLSI) circuits or gate arrays, off-the-shelf semiconductors such as logic chips, transistors, or other discrete components. A module may also be implemented in programmable hardware devices such as field programmable gate arrays, programmable array logic, programmable logic devices, graphics processing units, or the like.
A module may also be at least partially implemented in software for execution by various types of processors. An identified unit of executable code may, for instance, comprise one or more physical or logical blocks of computer instructions that may, for instance, be organized as an object, procedure, or function. Nevertheless, the executables of an identified module need not be physically located together but may comprise disparate instructions stored in different locations which, when joined logically together, comprise the module and achieve the stated purpose for the module. Further, modules may be stored on a computer-readable medium, which may be, for instance, a hard disk drive, flash device, random access memory (RAM), tape, or any other such medium used to store data.
Indeed, a module of executable code could be a single instruction, or many instructions, and may even be distributed over several different code segments, among different programs, and across several memory devices. Similarly, operational data may be identified and illustrated herein within modules and may be embodied in any suitable form and organized within any suitable type of data structure. The operational data may be collected as a single data set or may be distributed over different locations including over different storage devices, and may exist, at least partially, merely as electronic signals on a system or network.
It will be readily understood that the components of the application, as generally described and illustrated in the figures herein, may be arranged and designed in a wide variety of different configurations. Thus, the detailed description of the embodiments is not intended to limit the scope of the application as claimed but is merely representative of selected embodiments of the application.
One having ordinary skill in the art will readily understand that the application as discussed above may be practiced with steps in a different order, and/or with hardware elements in configurations that are different than those which are disclosed. Therefore, although the application has been described based upon these preferred embodiments, it would be apparent to those of skill in the art that certain modifications, variations, and alternative constructions would be apparent, while remaining within the spirit and scope of the application. In order to determine the metes and bounds of the application, therefore, reference should be made to the appended claims.
While preferred embodiments of the present application have been described, it is to be understood that the embodiments described are illustrative only and the scope of the application is to be defined solely by the appended claims when considered with a full range of equivalents and modifications (e.g., protocols, hardware devices, software platforms etc.) thereto.
Number | Date | Country | |
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62712557 | Jul 2018 | US |
Number | Date | Country | |
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Parent | 16521822 | Jul 2019 | US |
Child | 17378655 | US |