System for Communication of Health Care Data

• US 20080103819A1
• Filed: 10/26/2007
• Published: 05/01/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 10/11/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Healthtrio LLC (Spok Holdings, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Malik Hasan
• Inventors: Peterson, John, Korpman, Ralph, Hasan, Malik, Wallen, J., Post, Cindy
• Granted Patent: US 7,664,660 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/2
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/00 Administration; Management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management
• 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 40/67 for remote operation
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 50/20 for computer-aided diagnosis, e.g. based on medical expert systems
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 80/00 ICT specially adapted for facilitating communication between medical practitioners or patients, e.g. for collaborative diagnosis, therapy or health monitoring

Abstract

An apparatus for communicating health care data from a sender to a receiver is provided. The apparatus has a first computer system, a second computer system, and a rules engine. The first computer system has health care data stored therein. The second computer system is in operable communication with, and is configured to extract the health care data from, the first computer system. The rules engine normalizes the extracted health care data to a predefined format.

Claims

1. A system of normalizing health care data for transfer between an insurer and a participant, the system comprising:

an insurer system configured to maintain at least one database comprising the health care data;

an intermediary system operatively connected to the insurer system and to the database;

wherein the intermediary system is configured to receive extracted health care data from the database of the insurer system, and store the extracted health care data in a staging database as extracted health care data;

a rules engine to normalize the extracted health care data to a predefined format;

wherein said rules engine determines the meanings of the extracted health care data in the staging database;

wherein the rules engine normalizes the extracted health care data by comparing the meanings of the extracted health care data to corresponding fields in the predefined format and then remodels the extracted health care data to the predefined format; and

a participant system in operable communication with the intermediary system;

wherein the participant system is configured to receive the health care data normalized to the predefined format.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the participant system transmits a request that is sent to the intermediary system that determines which health care data is to be extracted and normalized in order to respond to the request.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein the participant system transmits the request and the intermediary system transmits the normalized data over the internet.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the intermediary system comprises an error data system that removes extracted health care data identified as invalid when the extracted health care data is normalized to the predefined format;

and wherein the extracted health care data identified as invalid is made useable, reintroduced, and normalized to the predefined format.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the intermediary system comprises an audit database to track activity of the intermediary system.

6. The system of claim 2, wherein the rules engine defines the relationships among the extracted health care data normalized to the predefined format pursuant to predetermined instructions to determine a response to the request.