METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR SHARING MEDICAL INFORMATION

• US 20150019231A1
• Filed: 03/15/2012
• Published: 01/15/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 03/20/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Errick Sadler, Joseph Boucree, Melanie Mencer-Parks, Randy S. Sessler, Sherrod A. Woods, William Langfrod
• Original Assignee: Errick Sadler, Joseph Boucree, Melanie Mencer-Parks, Randy S. Sessler, Sherrod A. Woods, William Langfrod
• Inventors: Mencer-Parks, Melanie, Sessler, Randy S., Boucree, Joseph, Woods, Sherrod A., Sadler, Errick, Langfrod, William
• Granted Patent: US 10,007,761 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/2
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/0013 Medical image data A61B1/00011, A61B6/56, A61B8/56 take precedence
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/021 Measuring pressure in heart or blood vessels A61B5/0205 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/024 Detecting, measuring or recording pulse rate or heart rate A61B5/0205, A61B5/021 take precedence
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/1172 using fingerprinting
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/145 Measuring characteristics of blood in vivo, e.g. gas concentration, pH value; Measuring characteristics of body fluids or tissues, e.g. interstitial fluid, cerebral tissuemeasuring of blood pressure or blood flow A61B5/02; non-radiation detecting or locating of foreign bodies in blood A61B5/06
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/14532 for measuring glucose, e.g. by tissue impedance measurement
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/411 Detecting or monitoring allergy or intolerance reactions to an allergenic agent or substance
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/7465 Arrangements for interactive communication between patient and care services, e.g. by using a telephone network telemetry of measured physiological signal A61B5/0002
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 7/04 Electric stethoscopes microphones, acoustic transducers therefor H04R
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/14 specially adapted for billing systems
• 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 40/67 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

An apparatus and method is provided for treating a healthcare patient. The method includes the steps of establishing a audio/visual teleconference between a processor of the patient at a first location and a processor of a physician located at a second, remote location different from the first location and displaying a set of biometric parameters of the patient in real time to the physician at the remote location.

Claims

1. A method of treating a healthcare patient comprising:

establishing an internet connection using a high-performance single issue Central Processing Unit (CPU) which is integrated with a specially designed load-store DLX (“

Deluxe”

) architecture with a pipelining schema which allows multiple instructions to overlap, wherein every DLX instruction can be implemented in at most five clock cycles including;

     1) Instruction fetch cycle (IF),

     2) Instruction decode/register fetch cycle (ID),

     3) Execution/effective address cycle (EX)

     4) Memory Access/branch completion cycle (MEM) and

     5) Write-back cycle (WB), the operating speed of the CPU is equal to or greater than 1.2 GHz, the computer architecture is comprised of a minimum 16 KB Instruction and a minimum 16 KB Data 4-way, set-associative L1 cache, 256 KB unified 4-way, set-associative L2 cache, 16-bit DDR2 memory interface (up to 800 MHz data rate), two Gigabit Ethernet MACs with interface options, precise timing protocol and audio video bridging, single PCI-Express port, four USB 2.0 ports with integrated PHY, 4 SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) 2.0 ports with integrated PHYs, network security engine with encryption algorithms, audio and MPEG transport stream interface, two TDM (Time division multiplexing) channels, SDIO (Secure Digital Input Output), NAND flash, SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface), TWSI (Two wire serial interface) and two UART (Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transceiver) interfaces, the computer architecture is housed in the form factor of a plug computer, the plug computer is programmed to leverage the specially designed load-store DLX computer architecture, the plug computer is integrated with cellular/mobile communications circuitry, once the plug computer has established internet connectivity using said cellular/mobile communications circuitry, the plug computer issues several ping commands to a well-known web site such as Google, thereafter, using wireless circuitry embedded and Bluetooth (802.11n wireless) specific algorithms, the plug computer searches for and connects to Bluetooth (802.11n wireless) enabled medical peripherals which appear in a preconfigured data table, the data table contains the MAC addresses of each medical peripheral along with the name of the medical peripheral and its serial number, the algorithms stored on the plug computer reads the medical peripheral data table and sends data to and receives data from the connected medical peripherals during the communications handshaking process, once the communications handshaking process has been established between the plug computer and the medical peripherals, the plug computer reads data from the medical peripherals and establishes a Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection before securely transmitting the data to a remote server, the remote server hosts a secure web portal used to store patient vital signs, patient demographics, physician license information, Electronic Medical Records and other patient specific electronic records, the secure web portal is programmed to automatically generate alerts to the patient'"'"'s primary care physician if the patient'"'"'s vital readings are outside of the prescribed limits established by the patient'"'"'s primary care physician, when a patient'"'"'s vital signs signal an alert, the web server searches a database containing information for the appropriate medical specialists and pharmacists within the patient'"'"'s health insurance network who can collaborate with the patient and the patient'"'"'s primary care physician via a secure medical collaboration visit which is comprised of a live Flash enabled streaming audio/visual teleconference between a plug computer of the patient at a first location and a computer capable of receiving and sending live Flash audio/video of a physician located at a second, remote location different from the first location and a computer capable of receiving and sending live Flash audio/video of a physician located at a third location and a computer capable of receiving and sending live Flash audio/video of a physician located at a fourth location and a computer capable of receiving and sending live Flash audio/video of a physician located at a fifth location;

displaying a set of biometric parameters of the patient in real time to the physicians at the four remote locations.

2. The method of treating a healthcare patient as in claim 1 further comprising setting up a virtual private network between the patient and physicians.

3. The method of treating a healthcare patient as in claim 1 wherein the biometric parameters further comprise one of the group consisting of heart rate, an ultrasound image, an X-ray image, a glucose level, a chemical dependency measurement, an infectious disease measurement, a blood analysis, a spirometric measurement, a weight, a temperature, a blood pressure measurement, an exercise monitoring measurement, a peak flow measurement, on oximetric measurement, a stethoscope parameter, a high-resolution medical camera image, a high-resolution ophthalmologic image, a high-resolution ear, nose and throat image, a range of motion measurement or a infection detection measurement.

4. The method of treating a healthcare patient as in claim 1 further comprising coupling a biometric measurement device to the processor of the patient.

5. The method of treating a healthcare patient as in claim 4 further comprising coupling biometric details provided by the biometric measurement device to the processor of the patient through a USB connection.

6. The method of treating a healthcare patient as in claim 5 further comprising displaying an image of the biometric details on a display using dedicated software supplied with the biometric parameter measurement device.

7. The method of treating a healthcare patient as in claim 6 further comprising simultaneously displaying images of the physician and the image provided by the biometric parameter measuring device.

8. The method of treating a healthcare patient as in claim 6 further comprising capturing images provided by the biometric parameter measurement device as a sequence of real time images.

9. The method of treating a healthcare patient as in claim 8 further comprising sending the real time images to the website.

10. The method of treating a healthcare patient as in claim 9 further comprising archiving the real time images.

11. The method of treating a healthcare patient as in claim 9 further comprising sending the real time images to the physician.

12. The method of treating a healthcare patient as in claim 1 further comprising tracking a time and length of the audio/visual teleconference.

13. The method of treating a healthcare patient as in claim 12 further comprising generating and presenting a billing record for the teleconference to the physician after termination of the teleconference for entry by the physician of evaluation and management (E &

M) codes or current procedural terminology (CPT) codes.

14. The method of treating a healthcare patient as in claim 13 further comprising automatically generating a services invoice for the teleconference using the E &

M or CPT codes from the physician to a health insurer of the patient.

15. Apparatus for treating a healthcare patient comprising:

a website;

a conferencing application at the website that establishes a audio/visual teleconference between a plug computer of the patient at a first location and a computer capable of receiving and sending live streaming Flash audio video of up to four physicians located at second, third and fourth remote locations different from the first location; and

a data processing application at the website that displays a set of biometric parameters of the patient in real time to each of the four physicians at four remote locations.

16. The apparatus for treating a healthcare patient as in claim 15 further comprising a virtual private network located between the patient and physician.

17. The apparatus for treating a healthcare patient as in claim 15 wherein the biometric parameters further comprise one of the group consisting of heart rate, an ultrasound image, an X-ray image, a glucose level, a chemical dependency measurement, an infectious disease measurement, a blood analysis, a spirometric measurement, a weight, a temperature, a blood pressure measurement, an exercise monitoring measurement, a peak flow measurement, on oximetric measurement, a stethoscope parameter, a high-resolution medical camera image, a high-resolution ophthalmologic image, a high-resolution ear, nose and throat image, a range of motion measurement or a infection detection measurement.

18. The apparatus for treating a healthcare patient as in claim 15 further comprising a biometric measurement device connected to the processor of the patient.

19. The apparatus for treating a healthcare patient as in claim 18 further comprising a USB connection that couples biometric details provided by the biometric measurement device to the processor of the patient.

20. The apparatus for treating a healthcare patient as in claim 19 further comprising first and second window displays that simultaneously display images of the physician and images provided by the biometric parameter measuring device.

21. The apparatus for treating a healthcare patient as in claim 19 further comprising a data collection application that captures images provided by the biometric parameter measurement device as a sequence of real time images.

22. The apparatus for treating a healthcare patient as in claim 19 further comprising a data collection application that captures real time images provided by the biometric parameter measurement devices and sends the real time images to the website.

24. The apparatus for treating a healthcare patient as in claim 22 further comprising a conferencing application that sends the real time images to the physician.

25. The apparatus for treating a healthcare patient as in claim 15 further comprising a billing application that tracks a time and length of the audio/visual teleconference.

26. The apparatus for treating a healthcare patient as in claim 25 further comprising a billing record generated by the billing application for the teleconference with the physician after termination of the teleconference containing evaluation and management (E &

M) codes or current procedural terminology (CPT) codes entered by the physician.

27. The apparatus for treating a healthcare patient as in claim 26 further comprising a services invoice automatically generated by the billing application for the teleconference using the E &

M or CPT codes from the physician and sent to a health insurer of the patient.

23. The apparatus for treating a healthcare patient as in claim 23 further comprising a data base that archives the real time images.

28. Apparatus for treating a healthcare patient comprising:

means for establishing a audio/visual teleconference between a plug computer of the patient at a first location and a computer capable of sending and receiving live streaming Flash video and audio of up to four physicians located at second, third and fourth remote locations different from the first location;

means for simultaneously displaying a set of biometric parameters of the patient in real time to the patient and to the four physicians at four remote locations.

29. The apparatus for treating a healthcare patient as in claim 28 wherein the biometric parameters further comprise one of the group consisting of heart rate, an ultrasound image, an X-ray image, a glucose level, a chemical dependency measurement, an infectious disease measurement, a blood analysis, a spirometric measurement, a weight, a temperature, a blood pressure measurement, an exercise monitoring measurement, a peak flow measurement, on oximetric measurement, a stethoscope parameter, a high-resolution medical camera image, a high-resolution ophthalmologic image, a high-resolution ear, nose and throat image, a range of motion measurement or a infection detection measurement.

30. The apparatus for treating a healthcare patient as in claim 28 further comprising a data base that archives the real time images.

31. The apparatus for treating a healthcare patient as in claim 28 further comprising means for generating and presenting a billing record for the teleconference to the physician after termination of the teleconference for entry by the physician of evaluation and management (E &

M) codes or current procedural terminology (CPT) codes.

32. The apparatus for treating a healthcare patient as in claim 32 further comprising means for automatically generating a services invoice for the teleconference using the E &

M or CPT codes from the physician to a health insurer of the patient.