PATIENT MONITORING VIA IMAGE CAPTURE

• US 20080140444A1
• Filed: 12/06/2006
• Published: 06/12/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 12/06/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Karkanias, Chris Demetrios, Hodges, Stephen E.
• Granted Patent: US 7,983,933 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• 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 that monitors a clinical trial of a product, comprising:

an event recorder component that captures a plurality of images associated with an event, the event is a portion of the clinical trial; and

a compliance tracker component that monitors compliance of the event as a function of the clinical trial via analysis of a subset of the images.

2. The system of claim 1, further comprising a sensor component that gathers information that triggers image capture via the event recorder component.

3. The system of claim 2, the sensor component includes at least one of a physiological and an environmental sensor component.

4. The system of claim 1, further comprising an event annotation component that employs information to annotate the subset of the images;

the annotation facilitates compliance determination via analysis of the subset of the images.

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

6. The system of claim 1, the compliance tracker component at least one of automatically and manually monitors compliance of the event.

7. The system of claim 1, further comprising a radio frequency identification (RFID) tag reader that gathers activity information associated with use of the product;

the activity information is employed to determine compliance of the event as a function of the clinical trial.

8. The system of claim 7, further comprising an event annotation component that tags the subset of the images with the corresponding activity information;

the tag facilitates compliance determination via analysis of the subset of the images.

9. The system of claim 1, further comprising a scanner component that captures data from one of a barcode, printed text or handwritten text associated with a product;

the compliance tracker employs the data to assess compliance of the event as a function of the clinical trial.

10. The system of claim 9, further comprising an event annotation component that tags the subset of the images with the data captured from the barcode, printed text or handwritten text;

the tag enables compliance determination via analysis of the subset of the images.

11. The system of claim 1, further comprising an analysis component that automatically analyzes the subset of images as a function of compliance criteria and establishes compliance determination based upon the analysis.

12. The system of claim 1, the compliance is a function of medication identification and dosage information.

13. The system of claim 1, further comprising an alert generation component that notifies one of a subject or third party of a compliance deviation.

14. The system of claim 1, further comprising an interface component that enables playback of the subset of images associated with the event.

15. The system of claim 1, further comprising a criteria management component that enables programmability of criteria used to determine the compliance.

16. The system of claim 1, further comprising a sequence query component that enables a user to query captured images associated with the clinical trial.

17. A method of managing an individual'"'"'s use of a product, comprising:

displaying an image of an action of a user; and

determining compliance of the action represented within the image as a function of a compliance criterion associated to the product.

18. The method of claim 17, further comprising establishing the compliance criterion based upon a clinical trial.

19. The method of claim 17, further comprising:

querying an event log;

locating the image from the event log as a function of the query; and

retrieving the image from the event log.

20. A system that facilitates medical trial management, comprising:

means for capturing a user point-of-view sequence of images associated with an event;

means for annotating images with information associated with at least one of identification of the user, a drug, an environmental condition, a physiological condition or a drug container identification;

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

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