Intelligent Routing Of Patients Using Distributed Input Devices

• US 20090051546A1
• Filed: 10/28/2008
• Published: 02/26/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 04/10/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Tagnos, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Tagnos, Inc.
• Inventors: Bhavani, Neeraj
• Granted Patent: US 11,170,324 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 340/573.100
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 40/00 ICT specially adapted for the management or administration of healthcare resources or facilities; ICT specially adapted for the management or operation of medical equipment or devices
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 40/20 for the management or administration of healthcare resources or facilities, e.g. managing hospital staff or surgery rooms

Abstract

A system and method for intelligently routing patients on-the-fly inside a hospital is contemplated. Patients and resources are tagged to allow a central clearing house to track their location. Using the location information, the central clearing house can then dispatch commands to bring patients to resources, or vice versa. The tags can be any type of real-time location system, including ultrasound or radio frequency identification tags.

Claims

1. A method of bringing together a patient and a resource in a medical setting, comprising:

outfitting the patient with a first ultrasound tag, and the resource with a second ultrasound tag;

using the tags to keep track of locations of the patient and the resource;

providing a worker with a communicator; and

using the communicator to receive an instruction to move the resource to the patient.

2. The system of claim 1, further comprising a computer system that keeps track of the patient, the resource and the worker, and that causes the instruction to be sent to the communicator.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the system uses rule based logic to initiate the instruction.

4. The system of claim 1, further comprising tagging the communicator with a third ultrasound tag.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein using the tags to keep track of the locations comprises keeping track of at least one of the locations in three dimensions.