The present invention relates to a doctor's telephone-call routing system for providing effective communication between doctor and patient using a smartphone and fully automated teleconference solution thereby ensuring doctor's mobile number privacy and increase patients' access to all doctors across the globe.
Generally, doctor appointments are as per first come first serve not based on patient's health criticality. This leads to unnecessary clinical congestion by patients with very simple problem or just came for lab report review, etc. This makes the patients who are critically ill not meet the doctor in time. Various systems have been suggested for establishing communication between a doctor and a patient in case of any trivial problem. In the recent years, many medical communication systems have been developed to establish effective communication between a doctor and a patient. Generally the communication between a doctor and a patient is carried out by calling on the doctor's mobile number. Patients seek free consultation over the phone for trivial problems during odd hours. They also pass on their doctor's mobile numbers to their friends and relatives, and sometimes even to medical representatives. Once a doctor shares his or her private mobile number with a patient, the doctor loses control over who will call him or her. This leads to compromise to their privacy and lose their personal time as well.
Various systems and methods have been disclosed in the prior art that provide alternate methods for direct communication between a doctor and a patient. The present system involves the use of mobile system interface which needs to be installed in both doctor and patient's smartphone. The doctor and the patient then needs to register their mobile number with the system interface and system will enable telephone conference in order to setup an effective communication in case of any trivial problems, reviewing lab reports, counseling sessions, second opinions, etc so that the patient doesn't need to visit doctor's office personally. The doctor's privacy is also maintained as their mobile number is not disclosed and their personal time is saved to a great extent to review patients in clinic who are critically ill.
Various types of medical systems and methods to establish effective communication between the doctor and the patient are known in the prior art. The US Patent document US20120290638 A1 describes a method for initiating messaging and communication services with physicians using a medical communication system. In the cited document, the system comprises of one or more servers configured to receive a contact request from a requestor through at least one of the one or more communication devices wherein the contact request comprises of a physician identifier identifying a selected physician from one or more physicians presented. The servers further comprises of one or more processors, memory devices and communication devices such as network interfaces through which machine readable codes stored on a machine readable medium, such as a physical memory device can be executed by the servers to provide the functionality of the medical communication system. The medical communication system disclosed in this document also encompasses various other hardware like client devices or other computing devices to interact with the system. The medical communication system has components in geographically remote locations. Such system and method enhances the flow of information to and from physicians and may provide tracking and recording services, such as for the purpose of keeping accurate and timely medical records but are not feasible for use in case of medical urgencies faced by the patient. Doctor's privacy is compromised as his or her mobile number gets disclosed by the patient to others. Patient has to visit doctor's office for any trivial problem which is a major drawback solved by the present invention as it ensures that patient don't have to make clinical visits to doctor for such trivial problems.
The United States Patent document US20160335399 A1 describes a system and method for a patient to initiate and complete a voice enabled, computerized, symptom-based medical history, at the time the patient is concerned about a medical problem. In the cited document, the invention describes a system by which any patient can use a mobile computer device such as a smartphone, to initiate and complete a voice-driven, interactive, logic-based, medical history questionnaire for any current medical complaint. Once the medical history questionnaire is ready, it is automatically sent to the patient's physician. At the time the physician calls a patient who has already taken a medical history, the physician will have at his disposal the medical history report and access to patient's data held in the physician's EHR (Electronic Health Record). The physician can have access to the patient PHR (Personal Health Record) too which may contain relevant data that was acquired by medical applications used with the smartphone and could be more recent data that the physician might want to see. Access would be granted optionally by the patient at the time of patient registration. Furthermore, the physician can have access to most recent data on the patients smartphone, which has been inputted via a sensor or non-sensor based application, and not moved to the patients PHR (Personal Health Record) or the patient could run the sensor-based application while the physician is on the physician's smartphone, which has direct data communication access via an Internet or cellular connection to the patient's smartphone and both have the same application such that the physician could monitor the patient in real time by means of application software.
The claimed systems and methods consume a lot of time for patients as they have to personally make clinical visit to the hospital even for trivial problems. Moreover the claimed systems and methods do not ensure mobile number privacy of the doctor as it can be accessed easily by any person.
Hence, there is a need for a system and method to establish an effective communication between a doctor and a patient in case of any trivial problem faced by the patient so that the patient can easily communicate and get an instant recommendation for management of his or her medical problem avoiding unnecessary frequent hospital visits. More particularly, the system or method must ensure mobile number privacy of the doctor.
The present invention overcomes the drawbacks in the prior art and provides a system or method to establish effective communication between a doctor and a patient. The system comprises of various engines or servers which perform various functions associated with communication required between the doctor and the patient. The doctor registers with his or her mobile number in the system through Registration Engine. Once the doctor is registered with the system, a DPN (Doctor's Private Number) is generated which is a unique number that doctor can share with his or her patients. The patient also registers with his or her mobile number in the system along with the payment card details. Doctor can opt to receive call from patient or not by one click, either “Go Online” or “Go Offline”. The doctor can also enable option to receive “Emergency Call” from patient even if he or she is offline. Doctor configures his or her call fees as per call duration in the system for both normal call and emergency call. Patient dials the DPN of the doctor of his or her choice placing request to talk to particular doctor. If the doctor is “Online”, system will start processing the patient's request to talk to particular doctor. In case the doctor is “Offline”, a push notification or SMS (Short Message Service) reminder is send to doctor about the patient's interest to talk to him or her through Notification Engine. After viewing the notification if the doctor goes online, another push notification or SMS is sent to patient that doctor is now ready to receive calls and patient may dial DPN to talk and system will start processing the call request using Call Engine. While placing the call request, patient can also attach photos or include additional persons in the call by adding their mobile numbers. The system will start processing the call request by firstly making a call to doctor and then to the patient or vice versa or to both simultaneously and put them in a private telephone conference using Telephone Conference Engine. If doctor is busy with another patient call, system will place other patient in waiting list assigning a token number. Once the other patient's call gets over system will automatically start processing next call request from waiting patient as per their token number. If there is a need to talk to doctor immediately, waiting Patient can also opt for priority call with additional fees payment to by-pass the waiting queue and talk to doctor immediately. During telephone discussion, if the doctor or patient drops off from the conference call because of any mobile network or connectivity issue, the system will again redial and onboard them. The conference call is considered as complete if both doctor and patient disconnects the call or after a particular fixed call duration. For example—15 minutes. Once the call gets completed, the system will automatically charge the patient from his or her e-wallet or payment card or any other online payment instrument as per call duration multiplied by particular doctor's call fee and service charges. The Payment Processing Engine facilitates the processing of payment through Auto-debit, as the charges will be automatically deducted from patient payment instrument (card/wallet etc). The patient can also make call request to the system through SMS, by just messaging DPN number to particular mobile number. For e.g.:—SMS “678789 CALL” to given mobile number. Alternatively patient can also search available doctors & their DPN in a particular country, city, specialty in smartphone interface and request for the call. All telephonic discussions will be recorded on request/automatically for any future reference for patient or Doctor.
The present invention provides an effective communication system between a doctor and a patient using a smartphone interface, which is highly reliable and involves use of different server engines to perform the operation of communication between the doctor and patient in case of any trivial problem by patient. The system saves doctor's as well as patient's personal time and maintains doctor's privacy in case of any trivial problem without disclosing his or her personal mobile number to the patient.
It is to be understood that both the foregoing general description and the following details description are exemplary and explanatory and are intended to provide further explanation of the invention as claimed.
The foregoing and other features of embodiments will become more apparent from the following detailed description of embodiments when read in conjunction with the accompanying drawings. In the drawings, like reference numerals refer to like elements.
Reference will now be made in detail to the description of the present subject matter, one or more examples of which are shown in figures. Each example is provided to explain the subject matter and not a limitation. Various changes and modifications obvious to one skilled in the art to which the invention pertains are deemed to be within the spirit, scope and contemplation of the invention.
The present invention provides a system (100) which is configured to allow the patient for establishing telephone call with doctor in an effective way and make payments for the call per minute without any difficulty. The system is also configured to allow effective communication between patients of one country and doctor of different country.
The system comprises of a registration engine (102) which allows both the doctor and patient to register their mobile number through smartphone (101) interface. Once the doctor registers his or her mobile number, a DPN is generated which can be shared by them with their patients. Once patients have registered their mobile number along with payment card details they can contact any doctor of their choice just by dialing his or her DPN or by sending a simple SMS to the system from their registered mobile number using SMS Service Engine (107). After a patient requests a call with a doctor and if that doctor is online, the system first makes a call to the doctor and then to the patient or vice-versa or to both simultaneously thereby setting up a telephonic conference between a doctor and a patient using Telephone Conference Call Engine (103). This call is processed by the Call Engine (104) after receiving a call request from a patient, dialing both the doctor and the patient mobile number for setting up of a telephonic conference between them. In case, a patient requests a call with a doctor and if that doctor is offline, then in that condition, the system intimates the doctor about the patient's interest to talk to him or her by way of push notification using Push Notification Engine (106). In case, a request for call to the doctor is made by the patient and if that doctor is busy on a call with another patient, the system waitlists the patient and assigns him or her a token number. During this time, the patient doesn't need to wait online as the system automatically routes the conference call to the waiting patient when his or her turn arises. The doctor can opt to receive or not receive calls from their patients at any given time through the mobile interface or SMS. The system calculates the call duration and charges the patient as per the minute rate of the particular doctor. Hence, doctors are paid as per the time spent by them with a patient on a call. The patients can pay the charge using electronic wallets or through any other Payment Processing Engine (105).
After dialing DPN in mobile interface, and placing request for a call with a particular doctor, patient can attach or click photos of any documents, lab reports, or even a local wound and share with the doctor using the system, and receive necessary prescription or advice from the doctor. Patient can also add one or more person in the call by entering their telephone numbers.
The present invention provides mobile/telephone number privacy to doctor & effective communication system between doctors and patients through mobile or telephone to avoid unnecessary clinical visit and congestions for simple or trivial problems, follow-up reviews, second opinions, counseling sessions etc. This allows critically ill patients to get clinical visit appointments easily. The Doctor's Private Number provide access to patient to reach any doctor across the globe and talk to them in just two clicks or SMS away from their smartphone.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
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201741016495 | May 2017 | IN | national |