SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR A SEAMLESS USER INTERFACE FOR AN INTEGRATED ELECTRONIC HEALTH CARE INFORMATION SYSTEM

• US 20080033761A1
• Filed: 08/15/2007
• Published: 02/07/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 12/22/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Andrew Ma, Carl Dvorak, Daniel Bormann, Khiang Seow, Steve Larsen, Tony Brummel
• Original Assignee: Andrew Ma, Carl Dvorak, Daniel Bormann, Khiang Seow, Steve Larsen, Tony Brummel
• Inventors: Dvorak, Carl, Brummel, Tony, Ma, Andrew, Seow, Khiang, Larsen, Steve, Bormann, Daniel
• Granted Patent: US 7,703,042 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/3
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/08 Insurance
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 10/60 for patient-specific data, e.g. for electronic patient records
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 40/63 for local operation
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 40/67 for remote operation
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 70/00 ICT specially adapted for the handling or processing of medical references
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99931 Database or file accessing

Abstract

An interface for a medical record database allows multiple different applications to be opened accessing the records of a common and/or different patients. For those applications accessing the records of a common patient, a visual indication is provided indicating whether or not records of the same patient are being accessed to prevent the user from mistakenly comparing the records of different patients.

Claims

1. An electronic healthcare system, comprising:

a graphical user-interface;

at least one electronic computer communicating with the graphical user interface to provide;

(a) at least one electronic healthcare database including medical records;

(b) a set of different software applications usable in any order by a single user on the electronic computer, the different software applications allowing a user to access records of the electronic healthcare database for different patients;

(c) a provider program running on the at least one electronic computer to;

(i) receive input from a user through the graphical user-interface identifying multiple software applications to be initialized and opened;

(ii) provide a graphical indication of those initialized and opened software applications accessing records of a common patient.

2. The electronic system of claim 1 wherein the provider program further provides multiple different graphical indications each associated with applications accessing different common patients.

3. The electronic healthcare system of claim 2 wherein the graphical indication is a graphical workspace grouping [DJD1] graphical user interfaces for the initialized and opened software applications.

4. The electronic system of claim 3 wherein the provider program requires a user to switch between a first and second workspace in order to switch between a first and second initialized and opened software application accessing different common patients;

whereby confusion between records of different patients is reduced.

5. The electronic healthcare system of claim 3 wherein the provider program further accepts input from a user to switch between workspaces.

6. The electronic system of claim 5 wherein the user input is from a mouse, a predetermined key, or a stylus.

7. The electronic healthcare system of claim 3 wherein the provider program further accepts input from a user to switch between software applications within a workspace.

8. The electronic system of claim 7 wherein the user input is from a mouse, a predetermined key, or a stylus.

9. The electronic system of claim 2 wherein each workspace allows only a different subset of software applications to be opened and initialized.

10. The electronic system of claim 9 wherein the software applications are collected from software applications selected from the group consisting of:

order entry, charts and graphs, chart review, results review, registration, flowsheets, patient alerts, snapshot, visit navigator, patient history, patient demographics, and an enterprise added activity.

11. The electronic system of claim 1 wherein data entered through a first software applications may cause an automatic opening and initialization of a second software application accessing records of a same patient as accessed by the first software application.