Patent Application
20080010091
The foregoing objects and advantages of the present invention for a method of sharing a user-medical-record may be more readily understood by one skilled in the art with reference being had to the following detailed description of several preferred embodiments thereof, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings wherein like elements are designated by identical reference numerals throughout the several views, and in which:
Before describing in detail embodiments that are in accordance with the present invention, it should be observed that the embodiments reside primarily in combinations of method steps and system components related to sharing a user-medical-record. Accordingly, the system components and method steps have been represented where appropriate by conventional symbols in the drawings, showing only those specific details that are pertinent to understanding the embodiments of the present invention so as not to obscure the disclosure with details that will be readily apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art having the benefit of the description herein. Thus, it will be appreciated that for simplicity and clarity of illustration, common and well-understood elements that are useful or necessary in a commercially feasible embodiment may not be depicted in order to facilitate a less obstructed view of these various embodiments.
In this document, relational terms such as first and second, top and bottom, and the like may be used solely to distinguish one entity or action from another entity or action without necessarily requiring or implying any actual such relationship or order between such entities or actions. The terms “comprises,” “comprising,” “has”, “having,” “includes”, “including,” “contains”, “containing” or any other variation thereof, are intended to cover a non-exclusive inclusion, such that a process, method, article, or system that comprises, has, includes, contains a list of elements does not include only those elements but may include other elements not expressly listed or inherent to such process, method, article, or system. An element preceded by “comprises . . . a”, “has . . . a”, “includes . . . a”, “contains . . . a” does not, without more constraints, preclude the existence of additional identical elements in the process, method, article, or system that comprises, has, includes, contains the element. The terms “a” and “an” are defined as one or more unless explicitly stated otherwise herein. The terms “substantially”, “essentially”, “approximately”, “about” or any other version thereof, are defined as being close to as understood by one of ordinary skill in the art, and in one non-limiting embodiment the term is defined to be within 10%, in another embodiment within 5%, in another embodiment within 1% and in another embodiment within 0.5%. The term “coupled” as used herein is defined as connected, although not necessarily directly and not necessarily mechanically. A device or structure that is “configured” in a certain way is configured in at least that way, but may also be configured in ways that are not listed.
It will be appreciated that embodiments of the invention described herein may be comprised of one or more conventional processors and unique stored program instructions that control the one or more processors to implement, in conjunction with certain non-processor circuits, some, most, or all of the functions of the method and system for sharing a user-medical-record described herein. The non-processor circuits may include, but are not limited to, a transceiver, signal drivers, clock circuits and power source circuits. As such, these functions may be interpreted as steps of a method to share a user-medical-record described herein. Alternatively, some or all functions could be implemented by a state machine that has no stored program instructions, or in one or more application specific integrated circuits (ASICs), in which each function or some combinations of certain of the functions are implemented as custom logic. Of course, a combination of the two approaches could be used. Thus, methods and means for these functions have been described herein. Further, it is expected that one of ordinary skill, notwithstanding possibly significant effort and many design choices motivated by, for example, available time, current technology, and economic considerations, when guided by the concepts and principles disclosed herein will be readily capable of generating such software instructions and programs and ICs with minimal experimentation.
Generally speaking, pursuant to the various embodiments, the present invention relates to sharing a user-medical-record with at least one emergency service provider or at least one medical-service-computing-device using a user-computing-device. Those skilled in the art will realize that the above recognized advantages and other advantages described herein are merely exemplary and are not meant to be a complete rendering of all of the advantages of the various embodiments of the present invention.
Referring now to the drawings, and in particular
In accordance with various embodiments of the present invention, the user carrying a user-computing-device 105 can store his user-medical-record or a secure-reference to his user-medical-record in user-computing-device 105. Further, user-computing-device 105 can also store a part of the user-medical-record and a secure-reference to the entire user-medical-record. The user-medical-record can be, for instance, the user's blood pressure, the user's glucose level or the user's blood type. User-computing-device 105 can be for example, a mobile phone, a laptop, a personal digital assistant (PDA), a digital camera or even an MP3 player. Typically, user-computing-device 105 can be any device that can be a carrier of the user-medical-record or at least of a relevant summary of the user-medical-record.
In an embodiment of the present invention, the user can transfer the user-medical-record from user-computing-device 105 to a hospital Local Area Network (LAN) 110. If a secure-reference to the user-medical-record is stored in user-computing-device 105, the secure-reference can be transferred to hospital LAN 110. The secure-reference can be, for instance, a password to the user's account on a website that can contain the user-medical-record. Those skilled in the art will realize that hospitals may have Information Technology (IT) infrastructures built using communication devices such as desktop computers and Local Area Network (LAN). The user can transfer at least one of the user-medical-record and the secure-reference from the user-computing-device 105 using various communications technologies such as wireless fidelity (WiFi) communication technology, Bluetooth Technology, Short Messaging Service (SMS), Over-The-Air (OTA) communication technology or a simple Universal Serial Bus (USB) port.
The user-medical-record can also be transferred to an emergency crew 115. Emergency crew 115 can be for example, a fire brigade and an ambulance. Since emergency crew 105 receives the user-medical-record of the user even before meeting the user, emergency crew 115 can grasp the user's current situation accurately and can prepare for the urgent requirements that the user might have. Therefore, this embodiment of the present invention facilitates optimized usage of the time of emergency crew 115 and of the hospital.
In an embodiment of the present invention, the hospital or emergency crew 115 can update the user-medical-record enabling the updated version of user-medical-record to be available at a later time.
Turning now to
At step 210, the user-medical-record or the secure-reference to the user-medical-record is transferred to an emergency service provider. The method of transferring the user-medical-record and the secure-reference to the emergency service provider is explained in conjunction with the
In an embodiment of the present invention, ubiquitous computing technologies are used to enable a medical-service-computing-device to recognize the user-computing-device and interact with it, irrespective of the operating system and network connectivity of the user-computing-device or of the medical-service-computing-device is. The medical-service-computing-device belongs to at least one of the emergency crew, a health care system and the hospital.
Further, the user-computing-device can store personal information of the user and in order to protect the personal information, a provision for encryption and decryption of the personal information can be given. The personal information can be the user's bank information, the user's web access history or any information that may not be relevant to the user's medical history or any information that a user may not want to share with the emergency service provider. The user-medical-record, such as the user's name, the user's social security number or information of the user's health care system, can be stored in a special access area. In an embodiment of the present invention, the special access area can only by accessed using the secure-reference to the user-medical-record. In another embodiment of the invention, separate authentication methods, such as those using certificates, can be required to access the user-medical-record and the personal information stored in the user-computing-device. Certificates can be, but are not limited to, X.509 certificates using public key techniques. This can protect the user's personal information from being accessed by the emergency service provider or more than one medical-service-computing-device. In addition, if a hospital is a part of the health care system of the user, then the hospital can immediately access relevant summary of the user information, which can also comprise the personal information of the user; otherwise, the hospital may need to request the user's personal information at a later time stamp.
Turning now to
Upon receiving the user-medical-record from the user or upon retrieving the user-medical-record from the URL, the emergency service provider can forward the user-medical-record to more than one medical-service-computing-device at step 315. The medical-service-computing-device belongs to at least one of the emergency crew, a health care system and the hospital. The emergency crew can be a fire brigade or an ambulance. Since the emergency crew receives the user-medical-record of the user even before meeting the user, the emergency crew can grasp the user's current situation accurately and can prepare for the urgent requirements that the user might have. Therefore, the method of
In order to maintain the update of the services allotted to a user in an emergency situation, the emergency service provider can comprise an information manager module. The information manager module can be coupled to a database of a list of the emergency crew and the health care systems dedicated to the user. When the user places the emergency call to the emergency service provider, the user-medical-record or the secure-reference to the user-medical-record can be automatically transferred to the emergency crew and the health care system dedicated to the user.
Turning now to
In an embodiment of the present invention, in order to gain access to the user-medical-record, the medical-service-computing-device can detect the user-computing-device for information regarding connection. At step 410, a brokering device detects the connection information that can be used by the medical-service-computing-device to establish a connection with the user-computing-device. The brokering device is a special-purpose device designed to bridge between a variety of user-computing-devices and a plurality of medical-service-computing-devices, which can both be general-purpose, of-the-shelf devices enhanced with software components. The main task of the brokering device is to find a way to establish network connectivity with the user-computing-device. Establishing network connectivity can include taking responsibilities such as that of a wireless base station and a DHCP server or running various networking profile, such as the Bluetooth profiles. The brokering device may need to accomplish this task with minimal or no support from the user-computing-device, as the user may not be aware of the arriving emergency crew. However, the emergency crew can typically support the brokering device by performing simple actions on the user-computing-device, such as turning it on, restoring it from hibernation or resetting it. The other tasks include establishing network connectivity to the medical-service-computing-device and tunneling information between the user-medical-device and the medical-service-computing-device, which is expected to be much easier tasks as the emergency crew has control over the medical-service-computing-device. The connection information can comprise the type of communication technology that can be used to transfer the user-medical-record or the secure-reference. The communication technology can be for instance, a wireless fidelity (WiFi) communication technology, Bluetooth Technology, Short Messaging Service (SMS), Over-The-Air (OTA) communication technology or a simple Universal Serial Bus (USB) port. In addition, the connection information of the user-computing-device can also mention dedication status of the emergency crew or the health care system to the user.
In the process of getting the connection information, the medical-service-computing-device of the emergency crew or the health care system may need to provide the user-computing-device with authentication information at step 415. The authentication information can be an authentication certificate or a certificate chain. In an embodiment of the invention, separate authentication can be required to access the user-medical-record and the personal information stored in the user-computing-device, and, the certificate may specifies the scope of the authentication. This can protect the user's personal information from being accessed by the emergency service provider or more than one medical-service-computing-device. In addition, if a hospital is a part of the health care system of the user, then the hospital can immediately access relevant summary of the user information, which can also comprise the personal information of the user, otherwise the hospital may need to request for the same at a later time stamp. In an embodiment of the present invention, an authentication certificate issued to the emergency crew or the health care system can be valid for a predefined time period. The predefined time period can be for example, a specified number of weeks from the day of issuing the authentication certificate, a specified number of hours from the time of issuing the authentication certificate. Making an authentication certificate issued to the emergency crew or the health care system valid only for the predefined time period facilitates in reducing a misuse of the authentication certificate for accessing the user-computing-device.
At step 420, the user-medical-record or a secure-reference to the user-medical-record is received by the medical-service-computing-device. In an embodiment of the present invention, if the user recognizes the medical-service-computing-device as a part of the user's health care system, the user-computing-device can simultaneously provide the medical-service-computing-device an access to the user-medical-record and the personal information of the user. A secure-reference, such as a URL, to the user-medical-record can be transferred to the medical-service-computing-device. Detailed information of the user-medical-record can be securely retrieved from the URL. Storing a secure-reference to the user-medical-record can therefore obviate the need to store the detailed information of the user-medical-record on the user-computing-device.
Turning now to
A processor 515 can be coupled to transceiver 510. Processor 515 can process the authentication certificate or other information received in transceiver 510. Processor 515 can also be enabled to send only a relevant summary of the user-medical-record to a medical-service-computing-device. Further, user-computing-device 505 can comprise a memory 520. Memory 520 can be configured for storing the user-medical-record and the personal information of the user. To conserve resources, memory 520 can store only a secure-reference to the user-medical-record or the relevant summary of the user-medical-record along with the secure-reference to the user-medical-record. As mentioned earlier, the secure-reference can be, for instance, a password to the account of the user on a website that can contain the user-medical-record.
In an embodiment of the present invention, an emergency software program resides on memory 520 of user-computing-device 505. When an emergency crew meets the user or when the user is hospitalized for an emergency case, the doctors or the emergency crew can activate the emergency software program residing on user-computing-device 505. Upon activating the emergency software program, user-computing-device 505 can automatically transfer the user-medical-record, a relevant summary of the user-medical-record or a secure-reference to a medical-service-computing-device. The emergency software program is described in detail in conjunction with
Turning now to
Emergency software program 605 can comprise a discovery module 610. Discovery module 610 is adapted for receiving an activation request. Upon receiving the activation request, discovery module 610 discovers at least one medical-service-computing-device belonging to the emergency crew and or a health care system.
Once a list of medical-service-computing-devices belonging to the emergency crew and or the health care system in the neighborhood of the user-computing-device are discovered, at least one medical-service-computing-device that can be used easily for transferring a user-medical-record is chosen from the list. Those skilled in the art will realize that more than one medical-service-computing-device can also be chosen for transferring the user-medical-record. However, for exemplary purposes, only one medical-service-computing-device is considered in this embodiment.
A registry module 615 registers the chosen medical-service-computing-device. Registry module 615, essentially, stores connectivity information corresponding to the medical-service-computing-device for a predetermined time. The connectivity information of the medical-service-computing-device can enable the user to connect the user-computing-device with the medical-service-computing-device in future. The connectivity information can be an Internet Protocol (IP) address of the medical-service-computing-device and the communication technology used for the connection. The medical-service-computing-device may need to refresh after the predetermined time, else the medical-service-computing-device can be deregistered from the user-computing-device. Refreshing can comprise sending the connectivity information of the medical-service-computing-device after the predetermined time.
Those skilled in the art will realize that to register the user-computing-device or the user-medical-record with the medical-service-computing-device, a hospital system interface residing on the medical-service-computing-device can be used.
If a connection is established between the user-computing-device and the medical-service-computing-device, a security module 620 of emergency software program 605 can request the medical-service-computing-device for an authentication certificate. The authentication certificate or a certificate chain can provide the medical-service-computing-device with access to the user-medical-record or to a secure-reference to the user-medical-record stored in the user-computing-device. Security module 620 can then grant the medical-service-computing-device an access to the user-medical-record or the secure-reference to the user-medical-record or a relevant summary of the user-medical-record.
Emergency software program 605 further comprises a user-medical-data-manager module 625. User-medical-data-manager module 625 can be adapted for sending the user-medical-record or the secure-reference to the medical-service-computing-device. User-medical-data-manager module 625 can also send the user-medical-record or the secure-reference to an emergency service provider, such as a fire brigade, and the emergency service provider can forward the user-medical-record or the secure-reference to the medical-service-computing-device. As mentioned earlier, the emergency service provider can comprise an information manager module. The information manager module can be coupled to a database of a list of the emergency crew and the health care systems that are dedicated to the user.
In an embodiment of the present invention, user-medical-data-manager module 625 is also configured for updating the user-medical-record periodically. For example, each time a medical test is conducted on the user, user-medical-data-manager module 625 received an updated and an authenticated user-medical-record from the emergency service provider or the medical-service-computing-device. This can prevent erroneous user-medical-records from being stored in the user-computing-device.
Turning now to
Health care system 705 can also comprise a patient-data-manager 715. Patient-data-manager 715 can be responsible for managing a life cycle of the user-medical-record. When the life cycle is over, the user-medical-record is updated by requesting the user-computing-device for an updated user-medical-record.
Moreover, health care system 705 can also comprise a format converter 720. Format converter 720 can be enabled for converting the user-medical-record or the secure-reference of the user-medical-record into a format that is compatible with the format used by the health care system. Format converter 720 enables a seamless transfer of the user-medical-record across more than one medical-service-computing-device.
The various embodiments of the present invention provide a method and system that enables a user to have access to an improved medical service in case of an emergency. The user may not be at high risk and, therefore, may not be willing to pay for subscription services or provide private information to service providers in advance. By the virtue of the present invention, in case of an emergency, the emergency crew or the hospital can have access to the user-medical-record before meeting the user and, therefore, save on time. Obtaining quick access to a user's medical information can be very critical in case of an emergency. Moreover, the present invention can, especially, be useful for highly mobile users who can meet with a medical emergency while they are outside of their homes or workplaces.
In the foregoing specification, specific embodiments of the present invention have been described. However, one of ordinary skill in the art appreciates that various modifications and changes can be made without departing from the scope of the present invention as set forth in the claims below. Accordingly, the specification and figures are to be regarded in an illustrative rather than a restrictive sense, and all such modifications are intended to be included within the scope of present invention. The benefits, advantages, solutions to problems, and any element(s) that may cause any benefit, advantage, or solution to occur or become more pronounced are not to be construed as a critical, required, or essential features or elements of any or all the claims.
