System and method for orchestrating clinical collaboration sessions

• US 20060143043A1
• Filed: 12/27/2004
• Published: 06/29/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 12/27/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Cerner Innovation, Inc. (Oracle Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Cerner Innovation, Inc. (Oracle Corporation)
• Inventors: McCallie, David P. Jr., Finn, Christopher S., Crooks, Steven S., O'Larte, David J.
• Granted Patent: US 7,953,608 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/2
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 10/60 for patient-specific data, e.g. for electronic patient records
• 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

A system and associated methods for orchestrating a collaboration session are disclosed. One method involves orchestrating a collaboration session between a requesting clinician and another clinician where information is exchanged electronically. According to the method, requests for collaboration sessions are received by a computer system from the requesting clinician, with a given request related to a piece of patient-focused clinical data. Each request is analyzed to build a roster of potentially available clinicians for collaboration. A collaboration session is then facilitated between the requesting clinician and one or more of the potentially available clinicians on the roster.

Claims

1. A method in a computer system for generating a roster of potentially available clinicians for a collaboration session with a requesting clinician, the method comprising:

receiving a request from the requesting clinician for a collaboration session, the request related to a piece of patient-focused clinical data; and

automatically analyzing the request to produce identities for the potentially available clinicians.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the patient-focused clinical data includes at least one clinician contained within a medical record.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the step of analyzing the request includes determining the potentially available clinicians that practice with both the requesting clinician and the at least one clinician contained within the medical record.

4. The method of claim 2, wherein the step of analyzing the request includes determining the potentially available clinicians related to the at least one clinician contained within a medical record.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the potentially available clinicians related to the at least one clinician contained within a medical record are determined according to at least one of:

clinicians within the same organization, clinicians sharing the same role, and clinicians within the same web of care.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the patient-focused clinical data includes information contained within a medical record other than clinician information.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the step of analyzing the request includes determining the author of the piece of patient-focused clinical data.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein the step of analyzing the request further includes determining the potentially available clinicians related to the author of the piece of patient-focused clinical data.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of analyzing the request further includes determining clinical content to be provided with the piece of person-focused clinical data during the collaboration session.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein the clinical content includes information contained within an electronic medial record associated with a particular patient related to the patient-focused clinical data.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of analyzing the request further includes invoking a software agent to monitor the collaboration session based on the piece of patient-focused clinical data related to the request.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein the step of analyzing the request further includes aggregating the identities of the potentially available clinicians and the software agent into the roster.

13. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of analyzing the request further includes acquiring presence information for each of the potentially available clinicians on the roster.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein the presence information acquired is updated in real-time and displayed as part of the roster.

15. The method of claim 1, further comprising accessing stored preferences to pre-select any default potentially available clinicians for the roster, wherein the stored preferences are at least one of stored preferences of the requesting clinician and stored preferences of an organization associated with at least one of the requesting clinician and the potentially available clinicians.

16. The method of claim 1, further comprising ranking the potentially available clinicians on the roster based on a clinical relevance scoring algorithm, wherein the scoring algorithm determines the degree of clinical relevance of each of the potentially available clinicians to at least one of the requesting clinician and the piece of patient-focused context data.

17. The method of claim 1, further comprising presenting the roster to the requesting clinician for modification.

18. A computer system having a processor, a memory and an operating environment, the computer system operable to execute the method as recited in claim 1.

19. A computer-readable medium containing instructions for executing the method of claim 1.

20. A method in a computer system for orchestrating a collaboration session between a requesting clinician and at least one potentially available clinician, the method comprising:

receiving a request from the requesting clinician for a collaboration session, the request related to a piece of patient-focused clinical data;

analyzing the request to build a roster of potentially available clinicians; and

facilitating the collaboration session between the requesting clinician and at least one of the potentially available clinicians on the roster, the collaboration session including an electronic communication.

21. The method of claim 20, wherein the patient-focused clinical data includes at least one clinician contained within a medical record.

22. The method of claim 21, wherein the step of analyzing the request includes determining the potentially available clinicians that practice with both the requesting clinician and the at least one clinician contained within the medical record.

23. The method of claim 21, wherein the step of analyzing the request includes determining the potentially available clinicians related to the at least one clinician contained within a medical record.

24. The method of claim 23, wherein the potentially available clinicians related to the at least one clinician contained within a medical record are determined according to at least one of:

clinicians within the same organization, clinicians sharing the same role, and clinicians within the same web of care.

25. The method of claim 20, wherein the patient-focused clinical data includes information contained within a medical record other than clinician information.

26. The method of claim 25, wherein the step of analyzing the request includes determining the author of the piece of patient-focused clinical data.

27. The method of claim 26, wherein the step of analyzing the request further includes determining the potentially available clinicians related to the author of the piece of patient-focused clinical data.

28. The method of claim 20, wherein the step of analyzing the request further includes determining clinical content to be provided with the piece of person-focused clinical data during the collaboration session.

29. The method of claim 28, wherein the clinical content includes information contained within an electronic medial record associated with a particular patient related to the patient-focused clinical data.

30. The method of claim 20, wherein the step of analyzing the request includes ranking the potentially available clinicians on the roster based on a clinical relevance scoring algorithm, wherein the scoring algorithm determines the degree of clinical relevance of each of the potentially available clinicians to at least one of the requesting clinician and the piece of patient-focused context data.

31. The method of claim 20, further comprising presenting the roster to the requesting clinician for modification.

32. The method of claim 20, further comprising receiving a selection from the requesting clinician regarding a preferred mode for the electronic communication of the collaboration session.

33. The method of claim 32, wherein the electronic communication mode includes text messaging.

34. The method of claim 32, wherein the electronic communication mode includes voice over IP.

35. The method of claim 32, wherein the electronic communication mode includes video.

36. The method of claim 20, wherein the step of facilitating a collaboration session includes inviting the potentially available clinicians on the roster.

37. The method of claim 36, wherein the step of facilitating a collaboration session further includes inviting software agents based on the piece of patient-focused clinical data.

38. The method of claim 36, wherein the step of facilitating a collaboration session further includes receiving responses from the potentially available clinicians invited, the responses including electronic communication capabilities of each of the potentially available clinicians invited.

39. The method of claim 38, wherein the step of facilitating a collaboration session further includes establishing an appropriate connection for the collaboration session, the connection depending on the electronic communication capabilities of the requesting clinician and at least one of the potentially available clinicians invited that provided a response.

40. The method of claim 20, wherein the roster of potentially available clinicians includes software agents that are invoked for monitoring the collaboration session.

41. The method of claim 40, wherein the software agents monitor the collaboration session for triggering events of interest, the triggering events of interest causing the software agents to perform clinically relevant tasks.

43. The method of claim 20, wherein the mode of electronic communication for the collaboration session depends on the capabilities of the requesting clinician and the roster of potentially available clinicians.

44. The method of claim 43, wherein the capabilities of the requesting clinician and the roster of potentially available clinicians include text messaging.

45. The method of claim 43, wherein the capabilities of the requesting clinician and the roster of potentially available clinicians include voice over IP.

46. The method of claim 43, wherein the capabilities of the requesting clinician and the roster of potentially available clinicians include video.

47. The method of claim 20, further comprising creating a transcript record of the collaboration session.

48. The method of claim 47, wherein the transcript record is stored within a patient'"'"'s medical record as a clinical document.

49. The method of claim 47, wherein the transcript record is stored within a personal physician record as a clinical document.

50. The method of claim 47, further comprising retrieving and viewing of the transcript record of the collaboration session.

51. The method of claim 20, further comprising allowing browsing of the patient-focused clinical data by the requesting clinician and the at least one of the potentially available clinicians involved in the collaboration session.

52. The method of claim 51, wherein the browsing is done independently by accessing a uniform resource locator (URL).

53. The method of claim 51, wherein the browsing is done through an application sharing mode involving co-browsing.

54. The method of claim 20, wherein at least some of the potentially available clinicians on the roster share the same role, and wherein the step of facilitating a collaboration session includes:

sending invitations to the potentially available clinicians on the roster to collaborate;

receiving responses from the potentially available clinicians; and

rescinding the invitations to the potentially available clinicians who share the same role when one of those clinicians accepts the invitation to collaborate.

55. A computer system having a processor, a memory and an operating environment, the computer system operable to execute the method as recited in claim 20.

56. A computer-readable medium containing instructions for executing the method of claim 20.

42. The method of claim 42, wherein the software agents inject clinically relevant data into the collaboration session.

57. A computer system for orchestrating a collaboration session between a requesting clinician and at least one potentially available clinician, the system comprising:

a receiving component that receives a request from the requesting clinician for the collaboration session on a piece of patient-focused clinical data;

a roster generation component that builds a roster comprising a plurality of potentially available clinicians that are related to the piece of patient-focused clinical data; and

an interfacing component that facilitates the collaboration session between the requesting clinician and at least one of the plurality of potentially available clinicians on the roster.

58. The system of claim 57, wherein the clinical context data includes clinicians contained within a medical record.

59. The system of claim 57, wherein the clinical context data includes information contained within a medical record other than clinician information.

60. The system of claim 57, wherein the roster generation component analyzes the patient-focused clinical data to invoke a software agent to monitor the collaboration session.

61. The system of claim 57, wherein the roster generation component retrieves presence information for the plurality of potentially available clinicians, the presence information being updated in real-time and displayed as part of the roster.

62. The system of claim 57, wherein the roster generation component further includes a selecting component that pre-selects at least some of the potentially available clinicians on the roster according to at least one of requesting clinician preferences and institutional policies.

63. The system of claim 57, wherein the roster generation component further includes a ranking component that ranks the roster according to a clinical relevance scoring algorithm, the scoring algorithm determining a degree of clinical relevance of each of the potentially available clinicians to at least one of the requesting clinician and the piece of patient-focused context data.

64. The system of claim 57, wherein the interfacing component initiates electronic communication between the requesting user and at least one of the potentially available clinicians on the roster.

65. The system of claim 64, wherein the electronic communication includes text messaging.

66. The system of claim 64, wherein the electronic communication includes voice over IP.

67. The system of claim 64, wherein the electronic communication includes video.

68. The system of claim 57, further comprising a storing component that stores the collaboration session into a transcript record, the transcript record being part of the patient-focused context data.

69. The system of claim 57, further comprising a browsing component that allows the requesting clinician and the at least one of the potentially available clinicians involved in the collaboration to access the patient-focused context data.

70. A computer system for orchestrating a collaboration session, comprising:

a receiving component that receives a request from the requesting clinician for the collaboration session on a piece of patient-focused clinical data;

a software agent for participating in the collaboration session;

a roster generation component that builds a roster comprising a plurality of potentially available clinicians that are related to the piece of patient-focused clinical data; and

an interfacing component that facilitates the collaboration session between the requesting clinician and at least one of the software agent and at least of the plurality of potentially available clinicians on the roster.