SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PROTOCOL ADHERENCE

• US 20120154582A1
• Filed: 09/13/2011
• Published: 06/21/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 09/14/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: General Electric Company
• Original Assignee: General Electric Company
• Inventors: Johnson, Christopher Donald, Tu, Peter Henry, Bonissone, Piero Patrone, Lizzi, John Michael Jr., Akbay, Kunter Seref, Yu, Ting, Bufi, Corey Nicholas, Avasarala, Viswanath, Patwardhan, Kedar Anil, Gao, Dashan, Iyer, Naresh Sundaram, Yao, Yi
• Granted Patent: US 9,785,744 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 348/143
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/00 Administration; Management
• CPC Class Codes: G08B 21/245 Reminder of hygiene compliance policies, e.g. of washing hands
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 10/60 for patient-specific data, e.g. for electronic patient records
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 30/20 for handling medical images, e.g. DICOM, HL7 or PACS
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 40/20 for the management or administration of healthcare resources or facilities, e.g. managing hospital staff or surgery rooms
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 40/67 for remote operation
• 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

The system and method disclosed herein provides an integrated and automated workflow, sensor, and reasoning system that automatically detects breaches in protocols, appropriately alarms and records these breaches, facilitates staff adoption of protocol adherence, and ultimately enables the study of protocols for care comparative effectiveness. The system provides real-time alerts to medical personnel in the actual processes of care, thereby reducing the number of negative patient events and ultimately improving staff behavior with respect to protocol adherence.

Claims

1. A healthcare protocol adherence system, comprising:

an optical sensing system comprising;

one or more optical sensing components are positioned to monitor a room in a medical facility and which generate respective optical data representative of a field of view associated with the respective optical sensing component; and

a computer vision subsystem that receives the optical data from the one or more optical sensing components, wherein the computer vision subsystem executes one or more respective vision algorithms that, when executed, generate a plurality of messages, each message conveying an observation regarding a status of a monitored object, person, or spatial zone within one or more of the respective fields of view of the respective optical sensing components at a respective time;

a processor-based analysis component in communication with the optical sensing system, wherein the processor-based analysis component;

receives at least some of the plurality of messages as an input;

determines a current state for the respective monitored object, person, or spatial zone based on the input, wherein the current state corresponds to one of a plurality of defined states for a state space associated with the respective monitored object, person, or spatial zone;

determines if the current state constitutes a violation of a monitored healthcare protocol; and

generates a notice if a violation is determined.

2. The healthcare protocol adherence system of claim 1, comprising:

a message brokering system to which the optical sensing system publishes the plurality of messages and to which the processor-based analysis component subscribes to receive some or all of the plurality of messages.

3. The healthcare protocol adherence system of claim 1, wherein one or more of the plurality of defined states are based on one or both of a geo-spatial position or trajectory of a person with respect to other objects or to spatial zone within the field of view of at least one of the one or more optical sensors.

4. The healthcare protocol adherence system of claim 1, wherein one or more of the plurality of defined states are based on or convey a setting or status of an object, or indicator within the field of view of at least one of the one or more optical sensors.

5. The healthcare protocol adherence system of claim 1, wherein the one or more optical sensing components comprise one or more cameras.

6. The healthcare protocol adherence system of claim 1, wherein the processor-based analysis system executes one or more algorithms implementing a finite state machine or probabilistic finite state machine.

7. The healthcare protocol adherence system of claim 1, wherein the processor-based analysis system executes one or more algorithms implementing a case-based reasoning algorithm, an evidentiary-based reasoning algorithm, a neural net reasoning algorithm, a rule-based reasoning algorithm, a data mining algorithm, or combinations of such algorithms.

8. The healthcare protocol adherence system of claim 1 wherein the respective fields of view of the one or more optical sensing components monitor geospatial locations that have clinical and activity context relative to one or more protocols prescribing desired activity and state status.

9. The healthcare protocol adherence system of claim 1 wherein the one or more optical sensing components provide a control signal based on lighting conditions in a monitored space such that the illumination in the monitored room is maintained at a level sufficient for optical detection by the one or more optical sensing components.

10. The healthcare protocol adherence system of claim 1, comprising one or more optical patterns attached or affixed to the monitored person or object.

11. The healthcare protocol adherence system of claim 10, wherein the computer vision subsystem identifies a respective monitored object or person using the one or more optical patterns.

12. The healthcare protocol adherence system of claim 1, wherein the computer vision subsystem reads a display on a patient treatment or monitoring device to generate the observation regarding the status.

13. The healthcare protocol adherence system of claim 1, wherein the one or more optical sensing components comprise at least one pan-tilt-zoom camera.

14. The healthcare protocol adherence system of claim 13, wherein a level of zoom of the pan-tilt-zoom camera is automatically controlled in response to an estimated degree of certainty with respect to the state space of a respective monitored object, person, or spatial zone.

15. The healthcare protocol adherence system of claim 1, further comprising one or more of a radio-frequency identification (RFID) sensing component, a Doppler radar sensing component, a light detection and ranging (LIDAR) sensing component, an audio sensor, a thermal sensor, a pressure sensing component, or an infrared sensing component that generate additional messages conveying observations based on non-optical data, wherein the additional messages are received by the processor-based analysis component as additional inputs used to determine the current state for the respective monitored object, person, or spatial zone.

16. The healthcare protocol adherence system of claim 15, wherein the one or more optical sensors, the processor-based analysis component, and the one or more of the RFID sensing component, the Doppler radar sensing component, the LIDAR sensing component, the audio sensor, the thermal sensor, the pressure sensing component, or the infrared sensing component communicate asynchronously.

17. The healthcare protocol adherence system of claim 1, wherein the notice is generated at the time a process task is to be performed to prompt execution of the process task.

18. The healthcare protocol adherence system of claim 1, wherein the notice is only generated if the current state is out of compliance with the monitored protocol to a specified extent.

19. A non-transitory, computer-readable media comprising one or more routines which, when executed by at least one processor, cause acts to be performed comprising:

receiving a brokered message from a message broker subsystem, wherein the message conveys an observation regarding a status of a monitored object, person, or spatial zone within a monitor a room in a medical facility, wherein the status is derived from sensor inputs;

determining an estimation of a current state of the monitored object, person, or spatial zone based on the received messages, wherein the current state corresponds to one of a plurality of defined states for a state space associated with the respective monitored object, person, or spatial zone;

comparing the estimation of the current state to one or more reference states that are indicative of compliance with a monitored protocol; and

generating a notice if the estimation of the current state differs from the one or more reference states.

20. The non-transitory, computer-readable media of claim 19 wherein the brokered message is received based on a subscription to a message thread or topic maintained at the message broker subsystem.

21. A protocol adherence system, comprising:

a message broker hosting a plurality of message channels;

one or more sensor-based systems that publish a plurality of messages to the message broker relating observations related to activity within a monitored space within a medical facility;

one or more analysis components that subscribe to one or more of the message channels and thereby asynchronously receive one or more messages via the message broker, wherein the one or more analysis components determine a current state of a monitored space, person, or object within the monitored space based on the received messages and compare the current state to a reference state that corresponds to adherence or deviation from a protocol.

22. The protocol adherence system of claim 21, wherein the one or more sensor-based systems comprise one or more of optical sensors, radio-frequency identification (RFID) sensing components, Doppler radar sensing components, light detection and ranging (LIDAR) sensing components, range-finding devices, audio sensors, thermal sensors, pressure sensors, or infrared sensing components.

23. The protocol adherence system of claim 21, wherein the one or more analysis components publish alerts to the message broker if the comparison of the current state to the reference state is indicative of deviation from the protocol.

24. The protocol adherence system of claim 23, comprising one or more additional components that subscribe to one or more of the message channels and thereby asynchronously receive the published alerts and disseminate feedback based on the published alerts.

25. The protocol adherence system of claim 21, wherein the plurality of messages each comprise a respective XML document defined by a respective XML schema.

26. The protocol adherence system of claim 21, wherein the observations are indicative of one or more of a presence of patients or caregivers within the monitored spaces, a caregiver position with respect to predefined zones within the monitored space, or a patient position with respect to the predefined zones within the monitored space.

27. A method for protocol monitoring, comprising:

asynchronously receiving a plurality of brokered messages from a message broker, the plurality of brokered messages relating observations corresponding to activity within a monitored space in a medical facility;

determining a current state for a respective monitored object, person, or spatial zone based on the messages, wherein the current state corresponds to one of a plurality of defined states for a state space associated with the respective monitored object, person, or spatial zone;

comparing the current state to one or more reference states corresponding to a protocol; and

publishing an alert to the message broker if the current state differs from the one or more reference states.

28. The method of claim 27, comprising:

receiving an indication that the patient is subject to the protocol; and

subscribing to one or more message channels hosted on the message broker in response to receiving the indication, wherein subscribing to the one or more message channels causes the asynchronously receipt of the plurality of brokered messages to commence.

29. The method of claim 27, wherein at least some of the plurality of brokered messages comprise messages generated by one or more camera-based sensing systems in communication with the message broker.

30. The method of claim 27, wherein at least some of the plurality of brokered messages comprise messages generated by non-optical sensing systems in communication with the message broker.