DISEASE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM AND METHOD INCLUDING PAIN CODE

• US 20080051639A1
• Filed: 10/31/2007
• Published: 02/28/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 03/13/1997
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Healthways SC, LLC (Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Clinical Decision Support, LLC (Tivity Health, Inc.)
• Inventors: Iliff, Edwin
• Granted Patent: US 8,066,636 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 600/300
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 10/20 for electronic clinical trials or questionnaires
• 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 20/10 relating to drugs or medications, e.g. for ensuring correct administration to patients
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 40/67 for remote operation
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 50/20 for computer-aided diagnosis, e.g. based on medical expert systems
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 50/30 for calculating health indices; for individual health risk assessment
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 70/20 relating to practices or guidelines
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 70/60 relating to pathologies
• 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
• CPC Class Codes: Y02A 90/10 Information and communication technologies [ICT] supporting adaptation to climate change, e.g. for weather forecasting or climate simulation
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 128/92 Computer assisted medical diagnostics
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 128/925 Neural network

Abstract

A system and method for allowing a patient to access an automated process for managing a specified health problem called a disease. The system performs disease management in a fully automated manner, using periodic interactive dialogs with the patient to obtain health state measurements from the patient, to evaluate and assess the progress of the patient'"'"'s disease, to review and adjust therapy to optimal levels, and to give the patient medical advice for administering treatment and handling symptom flare-ups and acute episodes of the disease. The medical records are updated, the progression of the disease is stored and tracked, and the patient'"'"'s preferences for treatment are stored and then used to offer medical advice based on the current state of the disease. A prestored general disease trend curve is compared against a patient specific disease trend curve, and the system makes an automated response such as adjusting therapy.

Claims

1. An automated system for encoding a subjective experience of a patient'"'"'s pain, the system comprising:

a software function configured to encode a subjective description of a patient'"'"'s pain to represent a degree or description of pain; and

a pain code array, wherein the pain code array comprises encoded numeric values representing a plurality of different aspects of subjective patient descriptions of pain.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein numeric values of the pain code array are represented in digital form.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the pain code array comprises a plurality of subcodes for identifying defined details of the subjective description of the patient'"'"'s pain for identifying a disease or adjusting a treatment.

4. The system of claim 3, wherein the subcodes comprise a location, sensation, or frequency of a pain.

5. The system of claim 3, wherein the subcodes comprise provocative, quality, region, severity, or timing of a pain.

6. The system of claim 3, further comprising a prefix subcode for identifying a coding scheme of the pain code array.

7. A computerized method for encoding a description of a patient'"'"'s pain into a pain code array, the method comprising:

storing a set of aspect words in a data storage, wherein the aspect words correspond to an aspect of pain;

receiving one or more aspect words from a patient that describe a pain of the patient;

encoding the received aspect words into subcodes; and

combining the subcodes into a pain code array.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein the set of aspect words comprise sharp and dull pain.

9. The method of claim 7, further comprising providing a pointer to a memory location, wherein the memory location stores the pain code array.

10. The method of claim 7, wherein the patient is a human being in need of wellness care.

11. The method of claim 7, wherein the set of aspect words provide subjective descriptors of an illness with an associated pain.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein the subjective descriptors comprise one or more of cause, mass, size, or sensation.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein the cause descriptor comprises an infection or trauma.

14. An automated method for decoding a description of pain from a pain code array, the method comprising:

retrieving a pain code array containing one or more subcodes from a storage location of the pain code array; and

decoding the subcodes of the pain code array into subjective aspect words.

15. The method of claim 14, further comprising outputting the subjective aspect words for each subcode to provide a subjective description of a patient'"'"'s pain.

16. The method of claim 15, wherein the outputted aspect words recover an original set of words selected by a patient or an agent of the patient to describe a pain.

17. A computer usable medium having computer readable program code embodied therein for representing a description of a pain in a digitized form for adjusting therapy, the computer readable code comprising instructions for:

storing a listing of aspect words describing a pain experienced by a patient;

receiving a selection of an aspect word from the listing of aspect words; and

converting the received aspect word into an integer subcode that represents the received aspect word.

18. The computer usable medium of claim 17, further comprising inserting the integer subcode into a pain code array.

19. The computer usable medium of claim 18, further comprising performing another iteration of the computer instructions by providing the patient with another listing of aspect words to encode another selected aspect word in the pain code array.

20. The computer usable medium of claim 18, further comprising using the pain code array to access one or more associated diseases from a database comprising a list of pain codes and diseases, wherein the list of pain codes and diseases is indexed by pain code allowing multiple diseases to be associated to a pain code.

21. The computer usable medium of claim 18, wherein the pain code array suggests or eliminates at least one diagnosis of the pain.

22. The computer usable medium of claim 18, wherein the pain code array is used to suggest a therapy adjustment for providing an increased dosage, a decreased dosage, or a new treatment.

23. The computer usable medium of claim 17, wherein the aspect word is selected by a healthcare provider, healthcare provider'"'"'s agent, patient, or patient'"'"'s agent.

24. A computerized medical diagnosis method, comprising:

encoding a patient'"'"'s subjective perception of pain into a pain code; and

indexing a database of diseases with the pain code thereby diagnosing a disease.

25. The method of claim 24, wherein the pain code comprises subcodes representative of provocative, quality, region, severity and timing of the pain.