Proactive Patient Health Care Inference Engines and Systems

• US 20120143013A1
• Filed: 11/03/2011
• Published: 06/07/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 11/03/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: NXGN Management, LLC. (NextGen Healthcare, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: NXGN Management, LLC. (NextGen Healthcare, Inc.)
• Inventors: Davis, Robert Thompson III, Coleman, Jennifer M., Greig, David Christopher, Davidson, Christopher Harley
• Granted Patent: US 11,096,577 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 600/300
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/0002 Remote monitoring of patients using telemetry, e.g. transmission of vital signals via a communication network A61B5/07 takes precedence; transmission systems for measured values G08C; transmission H04B; transmission of digital information H04L; wireless communication networks H04W
• 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: G16Z 99/00 Subject matter not provided for in other main groups of this subclass

Abstract

Health care monitoring and alerting systems are presented. Contemplated systems include a rule repository storing rules for sending notifications to interested parties regarding a patient'"'"'s wellness status. An inference engine correlates actual, possibly real-time, patient wellness information with rule sets. If a patient'"'"'s wellness status satisfies triggering criteria of a rule sets, the inference engine instructs a communication engine to send a notification to interested parties according to the rules set.

Claims

1. A health care monitoring and alerting system, the system comprising:

one or more remote health care data source interfaces configured to provide access to patient data associated with wellness measures, the wellness measures reflecting a health of a patient;

a rules repository comprising a plurality of event triggering rule sets;

an inference engine communicatively coupled with the rule repository and at least one of the health care data sources over a network, where the inference engine is configured to correlate the wellness measures of the patient with at least one identified event triggering rule sets; and

a communication engine communicatively coupled with the inference engine and configured to send a notification to an entity when the patient'"'"'s wellness measures satisfy the one or more event triggering rule sets.

2. The system of claim 1, further comprising a provider interface communicatively coupled with the inference engine.

3. The system of claim 2, wherein the inference engine is further configured to store provider defined event triggering rule sets submitted via the provider interface from an authorized health care provider.

4. The system of claim 1, further comprising a patient interface communicatively coupled with at least one remote health care data source.

5. The system of claim 4, wherein the remote health care data source is configured to store patient-submitted patient data.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein the inference engine is further configured to convert patient data obtained from the remote health care data sources into a priori defined wellness measures.

7. The system of claim 6, wherein the defined wellness measures conform to an industry standard wellness measures.

8. The system of claim 7, wherein the industry standard wellness measures are selected from the list comprising:

PQRI, TCNY, DOQIT, BTE, and CKD.

9. The system of claim 1, wherein the inference engine is further configured to correlate the identified event triggering rule set with a health care provider associated with the patient.

10. The system of claim 1, where the notification is sent to a health care provider according to the identified event triggering rule set.

11. The system of claim 1, wherein the notification is sent to the patient according to the identified event triggering rule set.

12. The system of claim 1, wherein the communication engine is configured to select a communication channel via which the notification is sent according to communication rules within the identified event triggering rule set.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein the communication channel comprises a constructed cascading communication protocol based on the identified event triggering rule set.

14. The system of claim 1, wherein the notification comprises an appointment recommendation.

15. The system of claim 1, wherein the health care data sources include a plurality of unaffiliated health care practices.

16. The system of claim 15, wherein the plurality of unaffiliated health care practices participate in data share agreement with respect to the patient.

17. The system of claim 15, wherein the wellness measures used to correlate to the identified event triggering rules are obtained from at least two distinct, unaffiliated health care data sources.

18. The system of claim 1, wherein the identified event triggering rule set defines a rising risk factor.

19. The system of claim 1, wherein the identified event triggering rule set defines an urgency level associated with the notification.

20. The system of claim 1, wherein the identified event triggering rule set defines a priority level associated with the notification.

21. The system of claim 1, wherein the inference engine comprises a cloud-based computing platform.

22. The system of claim 1, wherein the remote health care data source includes at least one of the following:

a practice database, a patient database, a government database, a subscribed web service, and a non-health care related data source.

23. The system of claim 1, wherein the inference engine comprises a for-fee subscriber network-based service.