Advanced healthcare information routing and delivery systems and methods of use and doing business

• US 10,521,559 B1
• Filed: 06/13/2014
• Issued: 12/31/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 10/18/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Advanced Health Communications LLC
• Original Assignee: Advanced Health Communications LLC
• Inventors: Soumi, E. Ed., Pham, Matthew, Gonzalez, Cesar Omar
• Primary Examiner(s): Tiedeman, Jason S
• Application Number:
  US14/304,675
• Time in Patent Office: 2,027 Days
• Field of Search: 705 2, 705 3
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 40/20 for the management or administration of healthcare resources or facilities, e.g. managing hospital staff or surgery rooms
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 40/67 for remote operation
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 80/00 ICT specially adapted for facilitating communication between medical practitioners or patients, e.g. for collaborative diagnosis, therapy or health monitoring

Abstract

An advanced healthcare information routing and delivery system and method of use and doing business. Some embodiments provide medical professional rule-based message routing and delivery of messages. In some embodiments, the system stores, retrieves, evaluates, and applies one or more medical professional on-call coverage routing rules, message delivery procedure rules, or rule application filters. In some embodiments, the system automatically routes messages to target devices based on the application of medical professional on-call coverage routing rules, delivery procedure rules, or both. In some embodiments, rule application is determined, in part, by prioritized rule application filters. In some embodiments, medical professionals, end users, and system administrators can configure rules, rule application filters, or both in real time via mobile device interfaces, workstation interfaces, or browser-based interfaces. In some embodiments, the systems can be used to provide novel business methods in the field of healthcare message routing and delivery.

Claims

1. An automated method of selecting a medical professional and routing and delivering a message to the selected medical professional, the method comprising:

receiving coverage routing rules and delivery procedure rules from a device operated by a recipient or an administrator,

wherein the coverage routing rules and delivery procedure rules are received in real-time via a mobile device interface, workstation interface, or browser-based interface,

wherein the recipient is an on-call healthcare professional,

wherein the coverage routing rules are received pursuant to a save coverage model request from the device and specify a message routing destination comprising a message recipient or group of message recipients,

wherein the coverage routing rules that are received pursuant to a save coverage model request specify active coverages,

wherein the active coverages include the type or types of coverages, the timeframe or timeframes associated with the coverages, the recipient or group of recipients associated with coverages, and a patient or patients associated with coverages,

wherein the delivery procedure rules specify how a message is to be delivered to an end user and include one or more of

delivery of SMS messages to one or more mobile devices;

delivery of secure SMS messages via secure links to the one or more mobile devices;

delivery of transcribed voice message as a secure SMS message to the one or more mobile devices;

delivery of application messages to the one or more mobile devices;

delivery of messages to one or more system message inboxes; and

initiation of a conference call with a message originator;

storing the coverage routing rules and delivery procedure rules in a persistence layer of one or more database servers,

wherein the coverage routing rules are saved as a coverage document,

wherein the delivery procedure rules are saved as a procedure document;

receiving configurable rule application filters which control the application of the coverage routing rules and/or delivery procedure rules;

wherein the rule application filters include filter conditions,

wherein the filter conditions each include logical operators that relate defined values in the particular filter to values contained in a message;

wherein the filter conditions are constructed using default message fields and/or custom message fields;

storing the rule application filters in the one or more database servers;

wherein the rule application filters are saved as a filter document;

receiving a message to be routed in accord with the coverage routing rules and delivery procedure rules as determined by the rule application filters;

wherein the received message includes message fields and each field is assigned a received message input value,

wherein the message is received from a device associated with a sender;

determining a plurality of rule application filters to apply to the received message, the determination comprising defining a logical operator that compares a defined message attribute or value to a corresponding message attribute or value, wherein the logical operators comprising equal to, not equal to, contains, and does not contain;

pursuant to the comparison returning true, adding the plurality of filters to a pool of rule application filters;

prioritizing the pooled rule application filters,

wherein prioritizing comprises assigning a priority value to each of the pooled rule application filters and determining which of the pooled rule application filters has the highest priority;

wherein each priority value is determined by summing the received message input value associated with the message fields;

wherein the prioritized rule application filter having the highest priority is then implemented to select the coverage routing rule and the message routing procedure rule associated with the filter;

determining, by the rule application filters, coverage routing rules and delivery procedure rules to apply to a received message;

retrieving the determined coverage routing rules and delivery procedure rules from the one or more database servers;

applying the coverage routing rules and delivery procedure rules to the received message,

wherein the coverage routing rules specify the recipient or group of recipients,

wherein the delivery procedure rules specify the destination device and delivery method;

determining whether a recipient is on-call and to whom the message should be delivered using the applied coverage routing rules;

determining, based on the determined recipient, one or more devices and/or delivery methods to send the message based on the delivery procedure rules;

validating the sender of the message as a valid sender, the determined recipient as a valid provider, the patient as an existing or new patient, a callback number, and message content,

wherein if the validation fails, the message is not sent;

determining whether group forwarding is enabled, the group forwarding specifying whether the message can be sent to a designated group of recipients,

wherein if the message originated from a member of the group as the target recipient, coverage can be bypassed and the message sent to the target recipient,

pursuant to the validation and group forwarding determination, transmitting the message to the determined recipient or group of recipients using the determined one or more devices and/or delivery methods,

wherein a send event is transmitted to the device associated with the sending entity indicating that the message has been sent;

receiving acknowledgement that the end user received the message,

wherein the message receipt, delivery, and acknowledgement are performed in compliance with HIPAA requirements.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

matching at least one rule application filter to one or more of the message routing procedure rules; and

using one of the matched rule application filters to select one of the message routing procedure rules.

3. The method of claim 1 further comprising, if group forwarding is enabled, sending the message to at least one of a practice group staff computing device.

4. The method of claim 1 further comprising determining if the message is an in-group message.

5. The method of claim 2 further comprising adding the matched message routing procedure rules and rule application filters to a matched rule application filter pool.

6. The method of claim 1 further comprising adding matched rule application filters to a matched rule application filter pool.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein the secure SMS message includes a secure link to a transcribed voice message.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising transmitting at least one thousand routable messages received from a plurality of originating client computing devices to a plurality of destination computing devices associated with a plurality of recipients, wherein:

the at least one thousand routable messages received from a plurality of originating client computing devices are received within a five consecutive minute period of time; and

the at least one thousand routable messages are transmitted within the five consecutive minute period of time.