DISEASE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM AND METHOD INCLUDING THERAPY OPTIMIZATION

• US 20080052130A1
• Filed: 10/30/2007
• Published: 02/28/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 03/13/1997
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Clinical Decision Support, LLC (Tivity Health, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Clinical Decision Support, LLC (Tivity Health, Inc.)
• Inventors: Iliff, Edwin
• Application Number:
  US11/929,836
• Publication Number:
  US 20080052130A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/3
• 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 disease management method for improving a patient'"'"'s therapy, the method comprising:

inputting and storing subjective and objective health data of a patient into a data storage of a computing device;

retrieving a therapy of the patient, wherein the retrieved therapy corresponds to the subjective and objective health data of the patient; and

computing an adjustment to the retrieved therapy according to the subjective and objective health data of the patient.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising generating a subjective-objective correlation factor (SOCF) based on how reliable the patient is in subjectively assessing the subjective health data of the patient.

3. The method of claim 2, further comprising using the SOCF to adjust the retrieved therapy of the patient.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein retrieved therapy comprises one of:

a lower dosage for minimizing side effects of therapy and a higher dosage to increase effectiveness of a treatment.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the patient is a human being in need of wellness care.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising monitoring the effects of the therapy adjustment to improve the patient'"'"'s therapy over time.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising referring the patient to a human healthcare provider to resolve a disagreement.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein a disagreement exists when the patient does not consent to the retrieved therapy.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising notifying the patient or a healthcare provider of the patient when a new form of treatment becomes available.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein therapy comprises a plurality of adjustable parameters including different drug classes, types, brands, doses, routes, modes of drug administration, formulations, timing, and frequency.

11. A computerized system for managing a disease including a therapy module, the system comprising:

a computing device;

a computer program operating on the computing device, the computer program having a therapy module configured to

receive subjective and objective health data of a patient,

retrieve a therapy of the patient, wherein the therapy corresponds to the subjective and objective health data of the patient, and

compute an adjustment to the retrieved therapy according to the subjective and objective health data of the patient; and

a storage configured to store the subjective and objective health data of the patient.

12. A computer usable medium having computer readable program code embodied therein for obtaining and monitoring health data related to a patient'"'"'s disease, the computer readable code comprising instructions for:

obtaining a current health data of a patient that is entered into a computing device; and

monitoring the current health data, wherein a human is contacted when health data of the patient exceeds a threshold.

13. The computer usable medium of claim 12, wherein the current health data comprises measurements that are compared to a threshold value, wherein a healthcare provider is contacted if the current health measurements exceed the threshold value.

14. The computer usable medium of claim 12, wherein the current health data comprises measurements that are combined with one or more previous measurements to form a curve with a slope, wherein a healthcare provider is contacted if the slope of the current health measurements exceed a threshold slope.

15. The computer usable medium of claim 12, wherein the current health data is used to classify the health of the patient as better, same, or worse.

16. The computer usable medium of claim 15, wherein a worse classification results in an increased therapy dosage.

17. An automated method of therapy optimization comprising storing and adjusting a patient'"'"'s therapy from an automated patient session to another automated patient session to improve therapy parameters, the method comprising:

storing a patient'"'"'s health data obtained during automated patient sessions; and

computing an adjustment to a patient'"'"'s therapy by selecting a modified therapy from a medical treatment table comprising a plurality of therapies, wherein the selected therapy is chosen based on the patient'"'"'s health data.

18. The method of claim 17, wherein the patient'"'"'s therapy comprises a plurality of adjustable parameters including different formulations, doses, administering methods, and timing.

19. The method of claim 17, wherein the patient'"'"'s health data comprises objective health data.

20. The method of claim 17, wherein the patient'"'"'s health data comprises subjective health data.

21. The method of claim 17, further comprising tracking the efficiency of the patient'"'"'s therapy by monitoring the patient'"'"'s health data from session to session.

22. A computerized method of therapy optimization, comprising:

computing the availability of objective health measurements and subjective health measurements for a particular patient having a particular disease; and

computing an adjustment to therapy for the patient based on available objective health measurements;

or

computing an adjustment to therapy for the patient based on unavailable objective health measurements and available subjective health measurements.

23. The method of claim 22, wherein the method additionally comprises collecting objective health measurements.

24. The method of claim 22, wherein the method additionally comprises collecting subjective health measurements.

25. The method of claim 22, wherein the subjective health measurements include measurements of side effects relating to the patient'"'"'s therapy.