Patient monitoring via image capture

• US 7,983,933 B2
• Filed: 12/06/2006
• Issued: 07/19/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 12/06/2006
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Karkanias, Chris Demetrios, Hodges, Stephen E.
• Primary Examiner(s): Cobanoglu; Dilek B
• Application Number:
  US11/567,455
• Publication Number:
  US 20080140444A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,686 Days
• Field of Search: 715/700, 713/186, 705/2, 705/3, 600/407, 600/137, 600/300, 340/870.07, 345/619, 700/244
• US Class Current: 705/2
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/02 Reservations, e.g. for tickets, services or events
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 10/20 for electronic clinical trials or questionnaires
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 40/60 for the operation of medical equipment or devices

Abstract

A system that can enable clinical trial compliance determination by viewing sequences of images captured during an event is disclosed. For example, the innovation can employ captured event sequences to enable a subject or third party to assess a subject'"'"'s actions related to a medical trial. The capture of event sequences can be triggered based upon sensory data, radio frequency identification (RFID) data, pattern recognition data, etc. The system also provides mechanisms to locate images or sequences, playback images or sequences or images as well as to set compliance parameters associated with a particular clinical trial.

Claims

1. A system, comprising:

an event recorder component configured to automatically capture a sequence of images associated with an event, the event is a portion of a clinical trial within a given period of time;

a sensor component configured to gather information that triggers image capture via the event recorder component;

at least one modular add-on device configured to sense data and communicate the data to the event recorder component, the at least one modular add-on device including a wearable device having at least one of a pulse-oximeter, a stretch or range-of-motion sensor, a skin galvanic response measuring sensor, or a gait sensor, the at least one modular add-on device is configured to communicate with the event recorder component via a wireless link;

a compliance tracker component configured to automatically monitor captured images in order to determine compliance with the clinical trial by analyzing of a subset of the images to verify dosage and timing of a medication;

an event annotation component configured to annotate the subset of the images with contextual information to facilitate the determination of compliance; and

a scanner component configured to capture data from textual information associated with a product, the compliance tracker configured to employ the data to assess the compliance with the clinical trial.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the sensor component includes at least one of a physiological or an environmental sensor component.

3. The system of claim 1, further comprising:

a sequence retrieval component configured to locate a desired sequence or image within the sequence of images based at least in part on the contextual information, the contextual information includes physiological data; and

an image playback component configured to display an image or images located by the sequence retrieval component.

4. The system of claim 1, the contextual information further includes at least one of subject information, medication information, dosage information, time/date information, environmental data or physiological data.

5. The system of claim 1, the event recorder component includes a radio frequency identification (RFID) tag reader component configured to gather activity information associated with use of the product, to employ in determining the compliance with the clinical trial.

6. The system of claim 5, the event annotation component is configured to tag the subset of the images with corresponding activity information, to facilitate the compliance determination via the analyzing of the subset of the images.

7. The system of claim 1, the scanner component is configured to employ pattern recognition to recognize the textual information.

8. The system of claim 1, to annotate the subset of images with the contextual information, the event annotation component is configured to tag the subset of the images with the data captured from the textual information, to the compliance determination via the analyzing of the subset of the images.

9. The system of claim 1, further comprising an analysis component configured to automatically analyze the subset of images as a function of at least one criterion.

10. The system of claim 1, the scanner component is further configured to scan a barcode encoding information identifying at least one of a subject of the clinical trial and a dosage interval associated with the clinical trial.

11. The system of claim 1, further comprising an alert generation component configured to provide notification of a compliance deviation.

12. The system of claim 1, further comprising an interface component configured to enable playback of the subset of images.

13. The system of claim 1, further comprising a criteria management component configured to enable programmability of criteria used to determine the compliance.

14. The system of claim 1, further comprising a sequence query component configured to enable querying of captured images associated with the clinical trial.

15. A method, comprising:

automatically capturing, via an image capture device, a sequence of images of an action associated with use of a product in a clinical trial;

identifying the product at least partly by scanning textual information associated with the product, and recognizing the textual information by pattern recognition;

inferring a granularity of image capture associated with the clinical trial at least partly based on regulations imposed on the clinical trial;

monitoring environmental and physiological data to capture contextual information;

capturing a further sequence of images in accordance with the inferred granularity, based on a triggering threshold;

capturing the monitored environmental and physiological data substantially simultaneously with capturing of at least one image of the sequence of images of the action and the further sequence of images;

annotating the at least one of the images with the captured environmental and physiological data; and

determining compliance of the action as a function of a compliance criterion associated with the product, based on the sequence of images, the further sequence of images, and the contextual information.

16. The method of claim 15, further comprising:

querying an event log;

locating at least one image of the sequence of images and the further sequence of images from the event log as a function of the query; and

retrieving the at least one image of the sequence of images and the further sequence of images from the event log.

17. A computer-readable storage medium storing instructions, the instructions to, if executed by a computing device, cause the computing device to perform operations comprising:

capturing a sequence of images associated with an event;

identifying a medication by employing pattern recognition to recognize textual information associated with the medication;

annotating the images with information associated with at least one of the medication, an identity, an environmental condition, or a physiological condition;

locating a subset of the images as a function of compliance criterion; and

automatically establishing a compliance determination as a function of content of the subset of images in view of the compliance criterion.