Expanding attribute profiles

• US 8,224,835 B2
• Filed: 08/12/2011
• Issued: 07/17/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 03/16/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: 23andme Incorporated (23andMe Holding Co.)
• Original Assignee: Expanse Networks, Inc.
• Inventors: Kenedy, Andrew Alexander, Eldering, Charles Anthony
• Primary Examiner(s): Coby, Frantz
• Application Number:
  US13/208,488
• Publication Number:
  US 20110295835A1
• Time in Patent Office: 340 Days
• Field of Search: 707/706, 707/708, 707/722, 707732-734, 707758-759, 707/765, 707/769, 707/781, 707/784
• US Class Current: 707/759
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/00 Information retrieval; Database structures therefor; File system structures therefor
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/2282 Tablespace storage structures; Management thereof
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/24575 using context
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/24578 using ranking
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/285 Clustering or classification
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9535 Search customisation based on user profiles and personalisation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9538 Presentation of query results
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/955 using information identifiers, e.g. uniform resource locators [URL]
• CPC Class Codes: G06N 3/08 Learning methods
• CPC Class Codes: G06N 5/04 Inference or reasoning models
• CPC Class Codes: G06N 7/01 Probabilistic graphical models, e.g. probabilistic networks
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/00 Finance; Insurance; Tax strategies; Processing of corporate or income taxes
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/08 Insurance
• CPC Class Codes: G09B 19/00 Teaching not covered by other main groups of this subclass teaching or practice apparatus for gun-aiming or gun-laying F41G3/26
• CPC Class Codes: G16B 20/00 ICT specially adapted for functional genomics or proteomics, e.g. genotype-phenotype associations
• CPC Class Codes: G16B 20/20 Allele or variant detection, e.g. single nucleotide polymorphism [SNP] detection
• CPC Class Codes: G16B 20/40 Population genetics; Linkage disequilibrium
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 20/30 relating to physical therapies or activities, e.g. physiotherapy, acupressure or exercising
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 40/63 for local operation
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 50/30 : for calculating health indices; for individual health risk assessment
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 50/70 : for mining of medical data, e.g. analysing previous cases of other patients
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 70/20 : relating to practices or guidelines
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/306 : User profiles

Abstract

A method and system for expanding attribute profiles are presented in which primary attributes from one or more attribute profiles are used to derive secondary attributes which are added to the respective attribute profiles to generate expanded attribute profiles. The expanded attribute profiles are generated to increase the strength of association of a query attribute with one or more attribute profiles associated with query-attribute-positive individuals.

Claims

1. A computer system for expanding attribute within attribute profiles to increase the strength of association between a query attribute and a set of attribute profiles associated with query-attribute-positive individuals, comprising:

a) a memory containing attribute profiles for a set of individuals;

b) a receiver for receiving a query attribute;

c) a computer readable medium containing instructions, which when executed by a processor, result in the execution of the steps of;

i) identifying a set of query-attribute-positive profiles;

ii) identifying a set of query-attribute-negative profiles;

iii) generating a set of attribute combinations by comparison of the query-attribute-positive profiles and the query-attribute-negative profiles;

iv) determining a first statistical result indicating the strength of association of the query attribute with attribute combinations having a higher frequency of occurrence in the query-attribute-positive profiles than in the query-attribute-negative profiles;

v) expanding one or more of the attributes in the query-attribute-positive profiles and the query-attribute-negative profiles to obtain a second statistical result having a higher strength of association of the query attribute with the attribute combinations containing the one or more expanded attributes.

2. The computer system of claim 1, wherein the expanding comprises deriving secondary attributes from the primary attributes, and wherein the secondary attributes have a lower resolution than the primary attributes.

3. The computer system of claim 2, wherein the secondary attribute encompasses a primary attribute.

4. The computer system of claim 2, wherein the secondary attribute is derived by compounding the values of two or more primary attributes.

5. The computer system of claim 2, wherein the secondary attribute is derived through a heuristic rule applied to one or more primary attributes.