Automated diagnostic system and method including encoding patient data

• US 6,475,143 B2
• Filed: 02/14/2001
• Issued: 11/05/2002
• Est. Priority Date: 02/14/2000
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Healthways SC, LLC (Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: First Opinion Corporation (Tivity Health, Inc.)
• Inventors: Iliff, Edwin C.
• Primary Examiner(s): Shaver, Kevin
• Assistant Examiner(s): Astorino, Michael C
• Application Number:
  US09/785,045
• Publication Number:
  US 20020013515A1
• Time in Patent Office: 629 Days
• Field of Search: 705/2-4, 600/300-301, 128/904, 128/920-925, 128/897-898
• 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 10/20 for electronic clinical trials or questionnaires
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 10/60 for patient-specific data, e.g. for electronic patient records
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 15/00 ICT specially adapted for medical reports, e.g. generation or transmission thereof
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 50/20 for computer-aided diagnosis, e.g. based on medical expert systems
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 70/60 relating to pathologies
• CPC Class Codes: Y02A 90/10 Information and communication technologies [ICT] supporting adaptation to climate change, e.g. for weather forecasting or climate simulation
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 128/904 Telephone telemetry
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 128/92 Computer assisted medical diagnostics
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 128/925 Neural network

Abstract

Structure-based processing includes a method of diagnosing diseases that works by arranging diseases, symptoms, and questions into a set of related disease, symptom, and question structures, such as objects or lists, in such a way that the structures can be processed to generate a dialogue with a patient. A structure-based processing system organizes medical knowledge into formal structures and then executes those structures on a structure engine to automatically select the next question. Patient responses to the questions lead to more questions and ultimately to a diagnosis. An object-oriented embodiment includes software objects utilized as active, intelligent agents where each object performs its own tasks and calls upon other objects to perform their tasks at the appropriate time to arrive at a diagnosis. Alternative symptoms, synergies, encoding of patient responses, multiple diagnostic modes, disease profiles or timeliness and the reuse of diagnostic objects enhance the processing of the system and method.

Claims

1. A computerized medical diagnosis method, comprising:

a) defining a spectrum of terms representative of a subjective description for an aspect of a medical symptom;

b) presenting the spectrum of terms to a patient during a diagnosis session;

c) selecting a term from among the spectrum of terms;

d) repeating a)-c) for other aspects of the medical symptom;

e) encoding the selected terms into a health data code; and

f) indexing a database of diseases with the health data code thereby diagnosing a disease.

2. A computerized medical diagnosis method, comprising;

a) defining a spectrum of terms representative of a subjective description for an aspect of a medical symptom;

b) defining diagnostic weights for each term of the spectrum;

c) presenting the spectrum of terms to a patient during a diagnosis session;

d) selecting a term from among the spectrum of terms;

e) corresponding the selected term to a weight;

f) applying the weight corresponding to the selected term to a diagnostic score so as to diagnose a medical condition;

g) repeating the acts a)-d) for other aspects of the medical symptom so as to select other terms; and

h) encoding the selected terms into a code.

3. The method defined in claim 2, additionally comprising:

repeating the acts a)-e) at a predetermined later time;

analyzing a change of the code over time; and

assigning a weight for a change in the medical symptom over time.