Systems, methods, and software for building intelligent on-line communities

• US 20030061215A1
• Filed: 03/20/2002
• Published: 03/27/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 09/20/1999
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Fintegraph, LLC (Ascend Innovation Management, LLC)
• Original Assignee: Body1 Incorporated
• Inventors: Messina, Christopher P.
• Granted Patent: US 7,162,508 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/9
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/335 Filtering based on additional data, e.g. user or group profiles filtering in web context G06F16/9535, G06F16/9536
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/35 Clustering; Classification
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9535 Search customisation based on user profiles and personalisation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/954 Navigation, e.g. using categorised browsing
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99939 Privileged access

Abstract

In recent years, computers have become everyday communication tools, fast approaching the commonness of telephones and televisions. Driving this approach is the ever-expanding Internet, which enables users not only to communicate with each other, but also to search for information of particular interest. Two problems for Internet users are the time and effort necessary to find information they want and to connect with other users who share interest in similar information. Accordingly, the present inventor devised systems, methods, and related software that spurs growth of databases and/or fosters connections between users of those databases. One exemplary method entails receiving user contributions to a theme-oriented database, such as a health-information website and granting users access rights to the database based on quantity, quality, and/or relevance of their contributions. The exemplary method also shares contact information with users making similar queries of the database, ultimately promoting development of intelligent on-line communities.

Claims

1. A method comprising exchanging access rights to a database for a data contribution to the database.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the access rights exchanged for the database are based on the quantity, quality, or relevance of the data contribution.

17. The methods or systems of claims 1-16, wherein the queries or contributions concern medical or health information.

18. The methods or systems of claims 1-16, wherein the queries or contributions concern knees, hearts, lungs, allergies, HIV, specific diseases, specific body parts, cancer, lost children, cooking, sports, entertainment, celebrities, politics, law, restaurants, consumer products, motion pictures, videos, music recordings, corporations, government officials, criminal activity, schools, science, wines, beers, foods, professional service providers, colleges, alumni of educational institutions, genealogy, gossip, or sex.

19. A computer-readable medium comprising instructions for facilitating execution of the methods of claims 1, 2, 4, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, or 16.

3. A system comprising:

a network-accessible database; and

means for exchanging respective access rights to the database for respective data contributions to the database.

4. A method comprising:

accepting one or more respective data contributions to a database from one or more respective users; and

granting the one or more respective users access rights to the database based on quality or relevance of the respective data contributions.

5. A system comprising:

means for accepting one or more respective data contributions to a database from one or more respective users; and

means for granting the one or more respective users access rights to the database based on quality or relevance of the respective data contributions.

6. A system comprising:

means for receiving one or more respective sets of information from one or more respective users, with each user having a respective username and respective database-access rights;

means for storing the one or more respective sets of information in a database;

means for assigning at least one respective score to each of the respective sets of information; and

means for updating the respective database-access index for at least one user based on the scored assigned to the respective set of information.

7. The system of claim 6, further comprising means for serving data from the database to at least one user, based on a query and the respective database-access rights of the one user.

8. A method comprising:

receiving one or more respective sets of information from one or more respective users, with each user having a respective username and respective database-access rights;

storing the one or more respective sets of information in a database;

assigning at least one respective score to each of the respective sets of information; and

updating the respective database-access index for at least one user based on the scored assigned to the respective set of information.

9. The method of claim 8, further comprising transmitting data from the database to at least one user, based on a query and the respective database-access rights of the one user.

10. A method comprising:

accepting two or more queries or contributions to a database from two or more respective users; and

facilitating relationships between the users based on similarities of the queries or contributions.

11. A system comprising:

means for accepting two or more queries or contributions to a database from two or more respective users; and

means for facilitating relationships between the users based on similarities of the queries or contributions.

12. A method comprising:

accepting one or more first queries or contributions to a database from one or more first users;

accepting a second query or contribution to the database from a second user;

identifying one or more of the first users based on similarities of the second query to one or more of the first queries or contributions; and

facilitating a relationship between the second user and the identified one or more first users.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein facilitating a relationship between the second user and the identified one or more first users comprises providing address information for one or more of the first users to the second user.

14. The method of claim 13 wherein providing address information for one or more of the first users to the second user comprises determining whether one or more of the first users has granted permission for providing address information.

15. A system comprising:

means for accepting one or more first queries or contributions to a database from one or more first users;

means for accepting a second query or contribution to the database from a second user; and

means for identifying one or more of the first users based on similarities of the second query to one or more of the first queries or contributions; and

means for facilitating a relationship between the second user and the identified one or more first users.

16. A method comprising:

receiving one or more queries for a first database, with each query having an associated username;

storing the at least a portion of each of the queries in a second database, with each stored portion associated with the associated username;

receiving a new query for the first database from a user computer;

searching the second database based on at least a portion of the new query to identify one or more usernames; and

communicating an offer to access the identified one or more usernames to the user computer.

20. A medical information system characterized by one or more of the following:

a user-registration and tracking module, an initial-symptom-and-medical-history-dialog module, a condition-inference engine, a condition-hyperlink generator;

a followup-dialog module, a knowledge-base-feedback module, and a user-comments module.

21. A medical information system comprising:

means for receiving information regarding medical symptoms from at least one user;

means for inferring a medical condition from the medical symptoms;

means for receiving information regarding a medical diagnosis of the medical symptoms; and

means for adjusting the means for inferring the medical condition, based on the medical diagnosis.

22. A method of providing medical information to users, the method comprising:

receiving information regarding medical symptoms from at least one user;

inferring a medical condition from the medical symptoms using an inference engine;

receiving information regarding a medical diagnosis of the medical symptoms; and

adjusting operation of the inference engine based on the medical diagnosis.