Tools for health and wellness

• US 7,647,285 B2
• Filed: 11/02/2006
• Issued: 01/12/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 11/04/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Heckerman, David E., Jojic, Nebojsa, Mundie, Craig J., Hinrichs, Randy J.
• Primary Examiner(s): Holmes; Michael B
• Application Number:
  US11/556,085
• Publication Number:
  US 20070112598A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,167 Days
• Field of Search: 706/20
• US Class Current: 706/20
• CPC Class Codes: G06N 20/00 Machine learning
• 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 50/20 for computer-aided diagnosis, e.g. based on medical expert systems
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 50/70 for mining of medical data, e.g. analysing previous cases of other patients

Abstract

A tool for providing health and/or wellness services is described herein. Not necessarily clean or unclean data about a plurality of self-selected or non-selected or unselected subjects is received. The data can be aggregated and mined at least in part by employing a statistical algorithm, a data-mining algorithm and/or a machine-learning algorithm. The data can be further employed to provide health and/or wellness services to participants.

Claims

1. An online system to facilitate providing health and/or wellness assistance, comprising:

means for obtaining unclean medical data from an unselected population via the Internet;

means for automatically drawing conclusions from the unclean medical data, the means for automatically drawing conclusions from the unclean medical data employing a statistical algorithm, a machine-learning algorithm, a data-mining algorithm and/or an artificial-intelligence algorithm to draw at least one conclusion from the unclean medical data;

means for receiving a query from a member of the unselected population; and

means for providing the member of the unselected population with a conclusion based on at least the query and at least some of the unclean medical data relating to the member of the unselected population.

2. The online system of claim 1, wherein the means for providing the member of the unselected population with a conclusion are further based at least in part on clean data from at least one of:

a randomized clinical trial, a controlled clinical trial, a double-blind clinical trial, a double-blind, randomized, controlled clinical trial, or a meta-analysis of two or more clinical trials.

3. The online system of claim 1, further comprising means for receiving a benefit for providing the conclusion to the member of the unselected population.

4. The online system of claim 1, wherein the unclean medical data is provided by entities interfacing with the online system via an Application Programming Interface.

5. A method of providing health and/or wellness assistance, comprising:

obtaining unclean medical data from an unselected population via the Internet;

automatically drawing conclusions from the unclean medical data, by employing at least one of;

a statistical algorithm, a machine-learning algorithm, a data-mining algorithm, or an artificial-intelligence algorithm to draw at least one conclusion from the unclean medical data;

receiving a query from a member of the unselected population; and

providing the member of the unselected population with a conclusion based on at least the query and at least some of the unclean medical data relating to the member of the unselected population.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the conclusion is further based at least in part on clean data from at least one of:

a randomized clinical trial, a controlled clinical trial, a double-blind clinical trial, a double-blind, randomized, controlled clinical trial, or a meta-analysis of two or more clinical trials.

7. The method of claim 5, further comprising receiving a benefit for providing the conclusion to the member of the unselected population.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein the benefit is a monetary benefit.

9. The method of claim 5, further comprising providing at least some members of the unselected population with at least one incentive to self-select to supply the unclean medical data.

10. The method of claim 9, further comprising providing a referral to a health-care provider based on the conclusion.

11. The method of claim 5, wherein the conclusion comprises at least one of a diagnosis or a treatment option.

12. A computer readable media storing computer-executable instructions that, when executed on a processor, perform acts to facilitate providing health and/or wellness assistance, the acts comprising:

obtaining unclean medical data from an unselected population via the Internet;

automatically drawing conclusions from the unclean medical data, by employing at least one of;

a statistical algorithm, a machine-learning algorithm, a data-mining algorithm, or an artificial-intelligence algorithm to draw at least one conclusion from the unclean medical data;

receiving a query from a member of the unselected population; and

providing the member of the unselected population with a conclusion based on at least the query and at least some of the unclean medical data relating to the member of the unselected population.

13. The computer readable media of claim 12, wherein the conclusion is further based at least in part on clean data.

14. The computer readable media of claim 12, the acts further comprising receiving a benefit for providing the conclusion to the member of the unselected population.