Knowledge portal for accessing, analyzing and standardizing data

• US 20050171941A1
• Filed: 08/24/2004
• Published: 08/04/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 02/02/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Hitachi KOKI Company Limited (Koki Holdings Co., Ltd.)
• Original Assignee: Hitachi KOKI Company Limited (Koki Holdings Co., Ltd.)
• Inventors: Rider, Eugene, Huang, Erh-An, Chen, Xiao, Milkovich, Scott
• Granted Patent: US 7,376,644 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/2428 Query predicate definition using graphical user interfaces, including menus and forms G06F16/2423 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/248 Presentation of query results
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/258 Data format conversion from or to a database
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/02 Reservations, e.g. for tickets, services or events
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/00 Finance; Insurance; Tax strategies; Processing of corporate or income taxes
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/03 Credit; Loans; Processing thereof
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 10/60 for patient-specific data, e.g. for electronic patient records
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 15/00 ICT specially adapted for medical reports, e.g. generation or transmission thereof
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 50/70 for mining of medical data, e.g. analysing previous cases of other patients
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 128/92 Computer assisted medical diagnostics
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99933 Query processing, i.e. searching
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99934 Query formulation, input preparation, or translation

Abstract

A method and system is provided to access one or more historical incident databases, for example, CDC, CPSC, DTI, AAPCC and the like, for standardizing the potentially differing categories and coding among the databases. The standardizing includes recoding of the categories by providing a unified set of categories reflective of similar categories found among the one or more databases, if any. Submission of search queries allows users to obtain unified data across the databases so that incident history statistics for one or more products tracked by commonly available databases may be easily acquired. The resulting reports and statistics may be used by various entities to understand historical incidents from multiple perspectives including, for example, injury and fatality statistics as a function of age group, type of injury, time periods, diagnosis, injury outcome, severity, and the like. Data may be presented in standardized formats or in any of the native database formats.

Claims

1. :

A method of searching databases, comprising the steps of;

accessing one or more databases each having historical incident data classified into categories or fields;

standardizing at least one of the categories of the historical incident data in the one or more databases by correlating incident data to a predetermined format; and

providing one or more outputs associated with the predetermined format for analysis.

2. :

The method of claim 1, further comprising the step of cross-referencing the categories among the one or more databases to find equivalent historical incident data for the correlating step.

3. :

The method of claim 1, wherein the accessing step comprises reading the one or more databases in a format native to each of the one or more databases.

4. :

The method of claim 1, wherein the categories for each of the one or more databases is database format dependent.

5. :

The method of claim 4, wherein at least one format of the one or more databases is different.

6. :

The method of claim 4, wherein at least one format of the one or more databases is one of partially and wholly different.

7. :

The method of claim 1, wherein the standardizing step includes at least one of recoding numeric codes and text codes originally associated with the categories.

8. :

The method of claim 1, wherein the standardizing step generates standardized coding at least partially different from any of the one or more databases.

9. :

The method of claim 1, wherein the standardizing step generates standardized coding using a pre-existing coding of one of the one or more databases.

10. :

The method of claim 1, further comprising generating a report which synthesizes the one or more outputs.

11. :

The method of claim 10, wherein the generating step generates a report using one of the standardized coding and a native coding associated with one of the one or more databases.

12. :

The method of claim 1, further comprising submitting a query to search the historical incident data.

13. :

The method of claim 1, further comprising submitting a query to search standardized categories.

14. :

The method of claim 1, further comprising data mining and statistical mining the historical incident data.

15. :

The method of claim 1, further comprising data mining and statistical mining the standardized categories.

16. :

The method of claim 1, further comprising applying automated scoring to the historical incident data for generating severity scores and at-risk scores.

17. :

The method of claim 16, wherein at least one of severity scores and at-risk scores are associated with demographics.

18. :

The method of claim 16, wherein at least one of severity scores and at-risk scores are associated by at least one of product and product characteristic.

19. :

The method of claim 1, further comprising providing product information to be used as parameters for a search of the standardized categories.

20. :

The method of claim 1, further comprising providing product information to be used as parameters for a search of the one or more databases.

21. :

The method of claim 1, further comprising prompting for data sources.

22. :

The method of claim 1, further comprising submitting a query, wherein the query includes at least one of an age range parameter, a year range parameter, a keyword parameter and a product code parameter.

23. :

The method of claim 22, further comprising checking whether a result of the query is sufficient, and if deemed sufficient, signifying an occurrence level and a severity level of incidents for records found during the query, otherwise, filtering the query results and resubmitting another query.

24. :

The method of claim 23, wherein the occurrence level includes a frequency indication of records found by the query and the severity level includes at least one of injury and fatality indication frequency.

25. :

The method of claim 1, wherein the historical incident data includes at least one of age data, injury data, fatality data, diagnosis data, injured body part data and disposition data.

26. :

The method of claim 1, wherein the providing step includes generating a report that includes accepting free-text input for inclusion in the report and exporting records from the one or more databases for inclusion in the report.

27. :

A method for searching databases, the method comprising;

accessing historical incident data from a plurality of databases having different coding representing categories;

recoding the different coding to provide a standardized coding of the historical incident data; and

outputting unified historical incident data from the plurality of databases using the standardized coding to create standardized categories.

28. :

The method of claim 27, further comprising the step of cross-referencing the categories among the plurality of databases with the standardized categories.

29. :

The method of claim 27, wherein the accessing step comprises reading the plurality of databases in a native format, and wherein the recoding step includes at least one of recoding numeric codes and text codes, and the recoding step generates standardized coding at least partially different from any of the plurality of databases.

30. :

The method of claim 29, further comprising the step of applying automated scoring to the historical incident data for generating severity scores and at-risk scores, wherein at least one of severity scores and at-risk scores are associated with demographics and the at least one of severity scores and at-risk scores are associated by at least one of product and product characteristic.

31. :

The method of claim 27, further comprising the steps of;

prompting for product information to be used as parameters for a query;

prompting for data sources to be used in the query;

prompting for query input, wherein the query input includes at least one of a age range, a year range, a keyword and a product code; and

submitting the query using the query input to access the standardized historical incident data to produce a query result.

32. :

The method of claim 31, further comprising checking whether the query result is sufficient, and if deemed sufficient, signifying an occurrence level and a severity level of incidents for records found during the query, otherwise, filtering the results and resubmitting another query.

33. :

The method of claim 27, wherein the historical incident data includes at least one of age data, injury data, fatality data, diagnosis data, injured body part data and disposition data.

34. :

The method of claim 27, wherein the outputting step includes accepting free-text input for inclusion in the report and exporting records from the one or more databases for inclusion in the report.

35. :

The method of claim 27, wherein the outputting step presents the unified historical incident data in at least one of a bar chart, a pie chart, a table, a graph, and a histogram.

36. :

A method for standardizing data, comprising the steps of;

recognizing one or more categories in one or more databases, each of the one or more databases having historical incident data;

associating the one or more categories based on one or more related characteristics to a predetermined category format; and

querying the historical incident data using the pre-determined category format to obtain statistical information for outputting.

37. :

The method of claim 36, wherein the associating step includes at least one of recoding numeric codes and text codes representative of the one or more categories.

38. :

The method of claim 36, wherein the recognizing step includes identifying a common phrases or words to recognize categories in the one or more databases.

39. :

The method of claim 36, wherein the associating step associates categories based on strength of word association using a confidence analysis.

40. :

The method of claim 36, wherein the pre-determined category format standardizes at least a portion of the categories across the one or more databases.

41. :

A computer program product comprising a computer usable medium having readable program code embodied in the medium, the computer program product includes at least one component to;

access one or more databases each having historical incident data classified into categories;

standardize at least one of the categories of the historical incident data in the one or more databases by correlating incident data to a predetermined format; and

provide one or more outputs associated with the predetermined format for analysis.

42. :

The computer program product of claim 41, wherein the at least one component cross-references the categories among the one or more databases to find equivalent historical incident data for the correlating step.

43. :

The computer program product of claim 41, wherein the at least one component reads the one or more databases in a format native to each of the one or more databases.

44. :

The computer program product of claim 41, wherein the categories for each of the one or more databases is database format dependent.

45. :

The computer program product of claim 41, wherein at least one format of the one or more databases is different.

46. :

The computer program product of claim 41, wherein at least one format of the one or more databases is one of partially and wholly different.

47. :

The computer program product of claim 41, wherein the at least one component recodes at least one of numeric codes and text codes originally associated with the categories.

48. :

The computer program product of claim 41, wherein the at least one component generates standardized coding at least partially different from any of the one or more databases.

49. :

The computer program product of claim 41, wherein the at least one component generates standardized coding using a pre-existing coding of one of the one or more databases.

50. :

The computer program product of claim 41, wherein the at least one component generates a report which synthesizes the one or more outputs.

51. :

The computer program product of claim 41, wherein the at least one component generates a report using one of the standardized coding and a native coding associated with one of the one or more databases.

52. :

The computer program product of claim 41, wherein the at least one component submits a query to search the historical product data.

53. :

The computer program product of claim 41, wherein the at least one component submits a query to search standardized categories.

54. :

The computer program product of claim 41, wherein the at least one component data mines and statistically analyzes mines the historical incident data.

55. :

The computer program product of claim 41, wherein the at least one component data mines and statistically analyzes the standardized categories.

56. :

The computer program product of claim 41, wherein the at least one component applies automated scoring to the historical incident data for generating severity scores and at-risk scores.

57. :

The computer program product of claim 56, wherein at least one of severity scores and at-risk scores are associated with demographics.

58. :

The computer program product of claim 56, wherein the at least one of severity scores and at-risk scores are associated by at least one of product and product characteristic.

59. :

The computer program product of claim 41, wherein the at least one component provides product information to be used as parameters for a search of the standardized categories.

60. :

The computer program product of claim 41, wherein the at least one component provides product information to be used as parameters for a search of the one or more databases.

61. :

The computer program product of claim 41, wherein the at least one component prompts for data sources.

62. :

The computer program product of claim 41, wherein the at least one component submits a query, wherein the query includes at least one of an age range parameter, a year range parameter, a keyword parameter and a product code parameter.

63. :

The computer program product of claim 41, wherein the at least one component comprises checking whether a result of the query is sufficient, and if deemed sufficient, signifying an occurrence level and a severity level of incidents for records found during the query, otherwise, filtering the query results and resubmitting another query.

64. :

The computer program product of claim 63, wherein the occurrence level includes a frequency indication of records found by the query and the severity level includes at least one of injury and fatality indication frequency.

65. :

The computer program product of claim 41, wherein the historical incident data includes at least one of age data, injury data, fatality data, diagnosis data, injured body part data and disposition data.

66. :

The computer program product of claim 41, wherein at least one component generates a report that includes accepting free-text input for inclusion in the report and exporting records from the one or more databases for inclusion in the report.