Adaptive communication methods and systems for facilitating the gathering, distribution and delivery of information related to medical care

• US 7,034,691 B1
• Filed: 01/25/2002
• Issued: 04/25/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 01/25/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Koninklijke Philips N.V.
• Original Assignee: Solvetech Corporation
• Inventors: Bergens, Michael U., Rapaport, Seymour A., Rinehart, Eric R., Clarke, Jeffrey E., Rapaport, Jeffrey A.
• Primary Examiner(s): NGUYEN, PHUNG
• Application Number:
  US10/058,154
• Time in Patent Office: 1,551 Days
• Field of Search: 340/573.1, 340/457, 340/539.1, 340/3.1, 600/300, 705/9, 379/88.22, 379/37, 379/38
• US Class Current: 340/573.1
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management
• 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 40/20 for the management or administration of healthcare resources or facilities, e.g. managing hospital staff or surgery rooms
• 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
• CPC Class Codes: Y02A 90/10 Information and communication technologies [ICT] supporting adaptation to climate change, e.g. for weather forecasting or climate simulation

Abstract

Automated methods and systems are disclosed for facilitating the timely gathering, monitoring, distribution and delivery of information related to medical care where such may include: (1) finding a communications channel for effectively attempting a message delivery to a specific target person at a specified time; (2) adaptively finding a targeted recipient even if the latter is highly mobile and/or has travel patterns or communications-channel preferences that change over time; (3) verifying that a targeted recipient has actually received an attempted delivery within an applicable time limit; (4) automatically recognizing that an urgent message delivery-attempt was not timely completed and adaptively alerting responsible entities of the in completion; and (5) automatically recognizing that an urgent change or non change of condition has occurred by virtue of information gathered during an automated or manually-conducted Interview where physician expected positive progress prior to Interview and adaptively alerting responsible entities of the changed or unchanged condition based on the urgency of the change or non-change.

Claims

1. A machine-implemented method for notifying at least one care-concerned person to a health or medical care-related situation constituted by at least one of the following notification-worthy situations:

(0.1) completion of a care-related task where said task completion calls for relatively prompt attention thereto;

(0.2) in-completion of a care-related communication delivery-attempt where said in-completion of the delivery-attempt calls for relatively prompt attention thereto;

(0.3) in-completion of a care-related task where said in-completion of the care-related task calls for relatively prompt attention thereto;

(0.4) an unexpected change or a lack of expected change in a medical condition of a given patient where said unexpected change or lack of expected change calls for relatively prompt attention thereto; and

(0.5) an apparent failure to notify a primary medical service provider, or a primary medical assistant as may be appropriate, of one of the above notification-worthy situations;

where said machine-implemented alerting method comprises;

(a) monitoring communications related to progress or lack of progress in timely completion of pre-scheduled, care-related tasks and related to timely completion of pre-scheduled, care-related communication delivery-attempts and related to medical conditions of respective ones of plural patients;

(b) identifying among the monitored communications those which are indicative of at least one of said care-related situations that call for relatively prompt attention thereto by a care-concerned person where criteria for determining whether or not a given situation is one that calls for relatively prompt attention thereto are machine-defined and where timeliness of pre-scheduled ones of said care-related tasks and care-related communication delivery-attempts are machine-defined; and

(c) for an identified one of the monitored communications which is indicative of at least one of said care-related situations that call for relatively prompt attention thereto, initiating a delivery-attempt for delivering to at least one targeted recipient in a group comprised of a medical service provider and a medical assistant an alert signal for notifying the targeted recipient of the monitored and identified communication.

2. The machine-implemented notifying method of claim 1 wherein said at least one care-concerned person includes a member of the group comprising a medical service provider and a medical assistant.

3. The machine-implemented notifying method of claim 1 wherein said at least one notification-worthy situations definitively include:

(0.2) said in-completion of a care-related communication delivery-attempt where said in-completion of the delivery-attempt calls for relatively prompt attention thereto; and

(0.3) said in-completion of a care-related task where said in-completion of the care-related task calls for relatively prompt attention thereto.

4. An alerting mechanism for summarily alerting a care-concerned person to a care-related situation constituted by at least one of the following situations:

(0.1) completion of a care-related task where said task completion calls for relatively prompt attention thereto;

(0.2) in-completion of a care-related communication delivery-attempt where said in-completion of the delivery-attempt calls for relatively prompt attention thereto;

(0.3) in-completion of a care-related task where said in-completion of the care-related task calls for relatively prompt attention thereto; and

(0.4) an unexpected change or a lack of expected change in a medical condition of a given patient where said unexpected change or lack of expected change calls for relatively prompt attention thereto;

where said alerting mechanism comprises;

(a) action requesting means for advising the care-concerned person of an attention-giving action that is to be provided by the care-concerned person or delegated to another care-concerned person in response to an alerted situation;

(b) topic defining means for advising the care-concerned person of the medical concern that is addressed by the alerted situation;

(c) patient identifying means for advising the care-concerned person of the identity of one or more patients associated with a corresponding attention-giving action and a corresponding medical concern that is addressed by the alerted situation; and

(d) situation identifying means for advising the care-concerned person of a situation type to which the alerted situation belongs.

5. The alerting mechanism of claim 4 wherein:

(a.1) said action requesting means includes means for advising the care-concerned person to at least provide an attention-giving action selected from the attention-giving group consisting of;

(a.1a) initiating a sending of test results to a tested patient to at least thereby let the tested patient know that the results have been received by the care-concerned person;

(a.1b) reviewing contents of an automated or semi-automated interview conducted with a corresponding patient; and

(a.1c) becoming aware of a failed attempt to deliver a communication relating to a corresponding patient;

(b.1) said topic defining means includes means for advising the care-concerned person of at least one of the medical concerns in a topic group consisting of;

(b.1a) an identifier of a blood component that is of concern;

(b.1b) an identifier of a chronic disease that is of concern;

(b.1c) an identifier of an on-setting disease that is of concern;

(b.1d) an identifier of a body part or body system that is of concern; and

(b.1e) an identifier of a type of test or other medical procedure that is of concern; and

(d.1) said situation identifying means includes means for advising the care-concerned person of at least one of the situation types in a situation type group consisting of;

(d.1a) a retrieval failure situation in which a corresponding communication delivery attempt was not timely or fully completed; and

(d.1b) an information-triggered situation in which information gathered during a corresponding communication delivery attempt triggered the alerted situation.

6. The alerting mechanism of claim 4 and further comprising:

(e) topic category defining means for advising the care-concerned person of a system-supported category encompassing the medical concern that is addressed by the alerted situation.

7. The alerting mechanism of claim 4 and further comprising:

(e) privilege controlling means for controlling alert-disposing privileges of pre-specified ones of care-concerned persons to certain classes or specific ones of attention-giving actions.

8. The machine-implemented notifying method of claim 4 wherein said at least one care-concerned person includes a member of the group comprising a medical service provider and a medical assistant.

9. In a machine-implemented, communications managing and delivering system having at least one of:

(0.1) filtering means for automatically identifying intervention-worthy communications which are worthy of being reviewed by a human intervener; and

(0.2) task in-completion detecting means for automatically detecting note-worthy failures to complete attempted communications and/or note-worthy failures to complete scheduled action items;

where the communications managing and delivering system further includes an alert generating means for generating alert reports indicative of at least one category of said intervention-worthy communications, note-worthy failures to complete attempted communications, and note-worthy failures to complete scheduled action items;

an alerts summarizing mechanism comprising;

(a) prioritizing means for prioritizing alert reports according to their comparative intervention-worthinesses or note-worthinesses, where said comparative worthiness characteristics are machine-defined; and

(b) target-person identifying means for identifying a target-person to whom one of said intervention-worthy communications is to be sent, or on whose behalf a note-worthy failure to complete an attempted communication occurred, or on whose behalf a note-worthy failure to complete a scheduled action item occurred.

10. The alerts summarizing mechanism of claim 9 and further comprising:

(c) summarized alerts reporting means for reporting summarizations of the prioritized alert reports to at least one person responsible for reacting to the alert reports; and

(d) details providing means for providing more details about an alert report summarized by one of the reported summarizations in response to the at least one responsible person selecting one of the reported summarizations.

11. The alerts summarizing mechanism of claim 10 and further comprising:

(e) delegation means for allowing said at least one responsible person to delegate to at least a second responsible person with instructed actions and by way of said communications managing and delivering system, the responsibility of reacting to a selected one or more of the alert reports.

12. The alerts summarizing mechanism of claim 10 and further comprising:

(f) delegation tracking means for allowing said at least one responsible person to track the carrying out of respective ones of said instructed actions by the at least second responsible person to whom was delegated the responsibility of reacting to respective ones of said alert reports.

13. The alerts summarizing mechanism of claim 9 and further comprising:

(c) summarized alerts reporting means for delivering predefined summarizations of the prioritized alert reports to at least one person responsible for reacting to the alert reports.

14. An automatic and adaptive dialog conducting mechanism for use in a communications managing and delivering system where the communications managing and delivering system stores attributes describing potential target persons to whom communications may be sent;

and where

said automatic and adaptive dialog conducting mechanism comprises;

(a) a decision tree having one or more dialog flow paths that are to be automatically followed during automated carrying out of a real-time adaptive dialog, where the one or more dialog flow paths that are followed can be selected in real time response to answers or lack of answers provided by the communication target person; and

(b) a presentable data section for storing content-variable data that is to be automatically presented at respective nodes of the decision tree, where the content-variable data can be automatically generated in response to stored personal attributes of the communication target person.

15. The adaptive dialog conducting mechanism of claim 14 and further comprising:

(c) a collectable data section for storing response and/or non-response data generated during the automated carrying out of the real-time adaptive dialog.

16. For use in a service providing organization, a machine-implemented method for increasing likelihood that service-related communications will be delivered to and retrieved by communications-targeted persons, said machine-implemented method comprising:

(a) adaptively defining multi-channel delivery strategies over time for potential, communications-targeted persons based on previous delivery-attempt histories so as to increasing likelihood of delivery success to specific ones of said potential, communications-targeted persons when a next communication is targeted to one or more of such potential, communications-targeted persons;

(b) requesting confirmation by communications-targeted persons of receipt and understanding of delivered ones of said communications; and

(c) if failed delivery-attempts exceed predefined thresholds or communications-targeted persons fail to confirm receipt and understanding of delivered ones of said communications within predefined time limits, routing alerts to responsible persons within the service providing organization asking them to respond to the failed communications attempts.

17. An alerting mechanism for alerting a health care-concerned person to a health care-related situation constituted by at least one of the following situations:

(0.1) completion of a care-related task where said task completion calls for relatively prompt attention thereto by the health care-concerned person or another person;

(0.2) incompletion of a care-related communication delivery-attempt where said incompletion of the delivery-attempt calls for relatively prompt attention thereto by the health care-concerned person or another person;

(0.3) incompletion of a care-related task where said incompletion of the care-related task calls for relatively prompt attention thereto by the health care-concerned person or another person; and

(0.4) an unexpected change or a lack of expected change in a medical condition of a given patient where said unexpected change or lack of expected change calls for relatively prompt attention thereto by the health care-concerned person or another person;

where said alerting mechanism comprises;

(a) action advising means for automatically advising the care-concerned person of an attention-giving action that is advised to be provided by the care-concerned person or delegated to another care-concerned person in response to an alerted situation; and

(b) topic defining means for automatically advising the care-concerned person of the medical concern that is addressed by the alerted situation; and

(c) patient identifying means for automatically advising the care-concerned person of the identity of one or more patients associated with a correspondingly advised attention-giving action and a corresponding medical concern that is addressed by the alerted situation.

18. The alerting mechanism of claim 17 wherein:

(a.1) said action advising means includes means for advising the care-concerned person to provide at least one attention-giving action selected from the attention-giving group consisting of;

(a.1a) initiating a sending of test results and a message to a tested patient;

(a.1b) reviewing contents of an automated or semi-automated interview conducted with a corresponding patient; and

(a.1c) becoming aware of a failed attempt to deliver a communication relating to a corresponding patient.

19. The alerting mechanism of claim 17 wherein:

(b.1) said topic defining means includes means for advising the care-concerned person of at least one of medical concerns in a topic group consisting of;

(b.1a) an identifier of a blood component that is of concern;

(b.1b) an identifier of a chronic disease that is of concern;

(b.1c) an identifier of an on-setting disease that is of concern;

(b.1d) an identifier of a body part or body system that is of concern;

(b.1e) an identifier of a medical related, scheduled event that is of concern; and

(b.1f) an identifier of a type of test or other medical procedure that is of concern.

20. The alerting mechanism of claim 17 wherein:

(d.1) said situation identifying means includes means for advising the care-concerned person of at least one of situation types in a situation type group consisting of;

(d.1a) a retrieval failure situation in which a corresponding communication delivery attempt was not timely or fully completed; and

(d.1b) an information-triggered situation in which information gathered during a corresponding communication delivery attempt triggered the alerted situation.

21. A machine-implemented follow-up method for use in providing health care services to patients, the method comprising:

(a) defining in machine-readable storage, one or more delivery deadlines by which respective deliveries of one or more, corresponding health care services to respective patients are to be timely completed;

(b) automatically first determining whether or not each health care service having a corresponding delivery deadline has been timely and completely received by the respective patient; and

(c) automatically delivering corresponding alerts to one or more persons responsible for completion of delivery of a given health care service having one of said delivery deadlines if, among other alert generating criteria, the given health care service is determined by said automatic first determining step to have been not timely and completely received by the respective patient.

22. The machine-implemented follow-up method of claim 21 wherein:

said health care services to be timely and completely delivered to respective patients include machine-conducted interview dialogs that are to be timely delivered to, and completed by respective patients; and

(c.1) said automatic delivering of corresponding alerts includes automatically prioritizing alerts relating to nondelivery to, or noncompletion of interview dialogs by respective patients in accordance with predefined interview alert importance rules; and

(c.2) said automatic delivering of corresponding alerts includes automatically sorting prioritized alerts so that the one or more responsible persons will be presented with interview nondelivery/noncompletion alerts having relatively high priority before being made aware, if at all, of interview nondelivery/noncompletion alerts having lower priority.

23. The machine-implemented follow-up method of claim 21 wherein:

said health care services to be timely and completely delivered to respective patients include medical test result reporting dialogs that are to be timely delivered to, and acknowledged by respective patients; and

(c.1) said automatic delivering of corresponding alerts includes automatically prioritizing alerts relating to nondelivery to, or nonacknowledgement of medical test result reporting dialogs by respective patients in accordance with predefined test-result report alert importance rules; and

(c.2) said automatic delivering of corresponding alerts includes automatically sorting prioritized alerts so that the one or more responsible persons will be made aware of test-result report nondelivery/nonacknowledgement alerts having relatively high priority before being made aware, if at all, of test-result report nondelivery/nonacknowledgement alerts having lower priority.

24. The machine-implemented follow-up method of claim 23 and further including:

(d) instructing patients to contact their health care providers if they do not automatically receive an expected medical test result reporting dialog.

25. The machine-implemented follow-up method of claim 21 wherein:

said health care services to be timely and completely delivered to respective patients include medical treatment result feedback dialogs that are to be timely delivered to, and responded upon by respective patients; and

(c.1) said automatic delivering of corresponding alerts includes automatically prioritizing alerts relating to nondelivery to, or nonresponsiveness to medical treatment result feedback dialogs by respective patients in accordance with predefined treatment-result feedback alert importance rules; and

(c.2) said automatic delivering of corresponding alerts includes automatically sorting prioritized alerts so that the one or more responsible persons will be made aware of treatment-result feedback nondelivery/nonresponsiveness alerts having relatively high priority before being made aware, if at all, of treatment-result feedback nondelivery/nonresponsiveness alerts having lower priority.

26. The machine-implemented follow-up method of claim 21 wherein:

said health care services to be timely and completely delivered to respective patients include periodic health maintenance feedback dialogs that are to be timely delivered to, and responded upon by respective patients; and

(c.1) said automatic delivering of corresponding alerts includes automatically prioritizing alerts relating to nondelivery to, or nonresponsiveness to periodic health maintenance feedback dialogs by respective patients in accordance with predefined periodic health maintenance alert importance rules; and

(c.2) said automatic delivering of corresponding alerts includes automatically sorting prioritized alerts so that the one or more responsible persons will be made aware of periodic health maintenance nondelivery/non-responsiveness alerts having relatively high priority before being made aware, if at all, of periodic health maintenance nondelivery/non-responsiveness alerts having lower priority.

27. Manufactured instructing signals for causing a correspondingly instructable machine to automatically carry out a machine-implemented method for use in providing health care services to patients, the method comprising:

(a) defining one or more delivery deadlines by which respective deliveries of one or more, corresponding health care services to respective patients are to be timely completed;

(b) determining whether or not each health care service having a corresponding delivery deadline has been timely and completely received by the respective patient; and

(c) delivering corresponding alerts to one or more persons responsible for completion of delivery of a given health care service having one of said delivery deadlines if, among other alert generating criteria, the given health care service is determined by said determining step to have been not timely and completely received by the respective patient.

28. A machine-implemented method for use in providing health care services to patients, under supervision of medically-trained care providers, the method comprising:

(a) defining in machine-readable storage, one or more representations of corresponding health care services that are planned to be respectively delivered to one or more respective patients;

(b) automatically first determining whether or not each planned health care service needs review and/or customization by a medically-trained care provider before being delivered to a corresponding patient;

(c) defining in machine-readable storage, one or more review deadlines by which corresponding planned health care services that are determined to need said review and/or customization are to be reviewed and/or customized by a specified one or more medically-trained care providers; and

(d) automatically delivering corresponding need-review alerts to one or more persons responsible for completion of the review and/or customization of a given health care service having one of said review deadlines if, among other alert generating criteria, the given health care service is automatically determined to have been not timely reviewed and/or customized by one of said specified one or more medically-trained care providers.

29. An automated machine system for providing machine-implemented follow-ups on progress in providing health care services to patients, the system comprising:

(a) machine-readable storage in which is defined, one or more delivery deadlines by which respective deliveries of one or more, corresponding health care services to respective patients are to be timely completed;

(b) first means for automatically determining whether or not each health care service having a corresponding delivery deadline has been timely and completely received by the respective patient; and

(c) second means for automatically delivering corresponding alerts to one or more persons responsible for completion of delivery of a given health care service having one of said delivery deadlines if, among other alert generating criteria, the given health care service is determined by said first means to have been not timely and completely received by the respective patient.

30. The automated machine system of claim 29 and further comprising:

(d) alert sorting means for automatically sorting prioritized alerts so that the one or more responsible persons will be presented with service nondelivery/noncompletion alerts having relatively high priority before being made aware, if at all, of service nondelivery/noncompletion alerts having lower priority.

31. An automated machine system for providing machine-supported health care services to patients, under supervision of medically-trained care providers, the system comprising:

(a) machine-readable storage having defined therein one or more representations of corresponding health care services that are planned to be respectively delivered to one or more respective patients;

(b) first means for automatically determining whether or not each planned health care service needs review and/or customization by a medically-trained care provider before being delivered to a corresponding patient;

(c) second means for defining in machine-readable storage, one or more review deadlines by which corresponding planned health care services that are determined to need said review and/or customization are to be reviewed and/or customized by a specified one or more medically-trained care providers; and

(d) alert means for automatically delivering corresponding need-review alerts to one or more persons responsible for completion of the review and/or customization of a given health care service having one of said review deadlines if, among other alert generating criteria, the given health care service is automatically determined to have been not timely reviewed and/or customized by one of said specified one or more medically-trained care providers.