Automated order entry system and method

• US 8,271,297 B2
• Filed: 12/29/2010
• Issued: 09/18/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 10/18/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Cerner Innovation, Inc. (Oracle Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Cerner Innovation, Inc. (Oracle Corporation)
• Inventors: Crooks, Steven S., Finn, Christopher S., McCallie, David P. Jr.
• Primary Examiner(s): Gilligan, Luke
• Assistant Examiner(s): Molina, Anita
• Application Number:
  US12/981,009
• Publication Number:
  US 20110099029A1
• Time in Patent Office: 629 Days
• Field of Search: 707/600, 707/759, 707/706, 705/2, 705/3
• US Class Current: 705/2
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/24578 using ranking
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/284 Relational databases
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 40/20 for the management or administration of healthcare resources or facilities, e.g. managing hospital staff or surgery rooms

Abstract

A computer-implemented method for facilitating placement of health care order entry is provided. The method includes receiving input indicative of a desired healthcare order. The order has certain terms therein that are normalized. The method also finds possible order matches for the normalized terms, and calculates a rough score for the possible order matches. The method refines the rough score with a rough score adjustment, and then ranks the found possible order matches from the most-likely to match the desired order to the least-likely based upon the refined rough score. These possible order matches can then be displayed to the user for selection.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method for normalizing an input string indicative of a health care order, the normalizing to facilitate searching for possible intended health care order sentences, comprising:

receiving, utilizing a first computer process, the input string indicative of a desired healthcare order having terms therein;

normalizing, utilizing a second computer process, the terms of the healthcare order, wherein the normalizing includes;

replacing any abbreviations with known terms corresponding to the respective abbreviations;

determining whether any of the terms end in a number string;

based on a determination that a term ends in a number string, determining if only one letter is present before the number;

based on a determination that only one letter is present before the number, maintaining the letter-number string; and

based on a determination that more than one letter is present before the number, separating the letter string from the number string;

wherein the first and second computer processes are executed utilizing one or more computing devices.

2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising separating any number string at the beginning of any term.

3. The computer-implemented method of claim 2, further comprising removing any periods present in terms that are not located before a number.

4. The computer-implemented method of claim 3, further comprising removing any hyphens present in any term if the term is less than four characters long.

5. The computer-implemented method of claim 4, further comprising setting an anti-flag for any found, pre-determined anti-terms.

6. The computer-implemented method of claim 5, further comprising removing any terms containing only numbers.