Adaptive communication methods and systems for facilitating the gathering, distribution and delivery of information related to medical care

• US 7,916,014 B2
• Filed: 06/18/2008
• Issued: 03/29/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 01/25/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Koninklijke Philips N.V.
• Original Assignee: Pype Assets BV LLC (Intellectual Ventures LLC)
• Inventors: Bergens, Michael U., Rapaport, Seymour A., Rinehart, Eric R., Clarke, Jeffrey E., Rapaport, Jeffrey A.
• Primary Examiner(s): Nguyen; Phung
• Application Number:
  US12/214,377
• Publication Number:
  US 20090055220A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,014 Days
• Field of Search: 340/573.1, 340/539.1, 340/825.69, 340/3.1, 705/3, 705/9, 379/88.22, 379/37, 379/38
• US Class Current: 340/539.12
• 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 40/20 for the management or administration of healthcare resources or facilities, e.g. managing hospital staff or surgery rooms
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 80/00 ICT specially adapted for facilitating communication between medical practitioners or patients, e.g. for collaborative diagnosis, therapy or health monitoring
• CPC Class Codes: Y02A 90/10 Information and communication technologies [ICT] supporting adaptation to climate change, e.g. for weather forecasting or climate simulation

Abstract

Automated methods and systems are disclosed for persistently facilitating the timely gathering, monitoring, distribution and delivery of information related to medical care where such may include: (1) finding a communications channel for effectively attempting a message delivery to a specific target person at a specified time; (2) adaptively finding a targeted recipient even if the latter is highly mobile and/or has travel patterns or communications-channel preferences that change over time; (3) verifying that a targeted recipient has actually received an attempted delivery within an applicable time limit; (4) automatically recognizing that an urgent message delivery-attempt was not timely completed and adaptively alerting responsible entities of the in completion; and (5) automatically recognizing that an urgent change or non change of condition has occurred by virtue of information gathered during an automated or manually-conducted Interview where physician expected positive progress prior to Interview and adaptively alerting responsible entities of the changed or unchanged condition based on the urgency of the change or non-change.

Claims

1. A method, comprising:

facilitating, by a computing device, formation of a content and a context of a medical-care related communication by collecting information related to the content and context of the medical-care related communication, wherein collecting information includes analyzing an externally-sourced transmission and converting the externally-sourced transmission into a form;

facilitating, by the computing device, determining whether to convert the form into an interview;

if the form is to be converted into an interview, forming by the computing device, the medical-care related communication, wherein the medical-care related communication comprises the interview;

determining, by the computing device, a preferred delivery strategy for a delivery attempt of the medical-care related communication;

facilitating, by the computing device, the delivery attempt of the medical-care related communication according to the preferred delivery strategy; and

checking, by the computing device, whether the medical-care related communication was delivered.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising checking by the computing device for a response to the medical-care related communication.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the medical-care related communication includes an information-gathering interview, an information-providing interview, or both.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein determining the preferred delivery strategy includes determining a time range for delivery of the medical-care related communication based upon previous delivery attempts of one or more medical-care related communications.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein facilitating formation of the content of the medical-care related communication includes determining whether the content of the medical-care related communication includes alerted information.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein facilitating formation of the context of the medical-care related communication includes collecting information related to a health condition of a recipient of the medical-care related communication or information related to a medical personnel associated with the medical-care related communication.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein determining the preferred delivery strategy comprises selecting a preferred communications channel from among wired telephone, wireless telephone, pager, e-mail, instant message, fax, or hardcopy mail.

8. The method of claim 1 further comprising determining, by the computing device and based at least in part on a delivery status or a response to the medical-care related communication, whether to generate an alert.

9. The method of claim 8, further comprising generating an alert, wherein generating the alert includes prioritizing the alert on a summary screen of a display based upon categories including lack of patient progress, lack of follow-up for tests or appointments, or change in patient health status.

14. The method of claim 1, wherein if the form is to be converted into the interview, prior to forming the medical-care related communication, the interview is configured to be further modified by a health care professional.

21. The method of claim 1, wherein the form includes at least patient-identifying information and topic-identifying information.

22. The method of claim 21, wherein the system-compatible format uses XML tags embedded within converter-produced text files.

10. A server apparatus, comprising:

one or more processors; and

logic configured to be operated by the one or more processors, to cause the server apparatus, in response to operation of the logic, to;

facilitate formation of a content and a context of a medical-care related communication by collecting information related to the content and the context of the medical-care related communication, wherein collecting information includes analyzing an externally-sourced transmission and conversion of the externally-sourced transmission into a form;

facilitate determining whether to convert the form into an interview to be included in the medical-care related communication;

facilitate the delivery attempt of the medical-care related communication according to a preferred delivery strategy; and

check whether the medical-care related communication was delivered.

11. The server apparatus of claim 10 wherein the logic is configured to cause the server apparatus, in response to operation of the logic, to determine the preferred delivery strategy based at least in part on data related to previous attempts at delivery per delivery channel, usable delivery channel identifiers, indications of whether recipient restrictions on delivery can be overridden, or security specifications.

12. The server apparatus of claim 10, wherein the preferred delivery strategy is selected from a set of available interview dialog delivery strategies.

13. The server apparatus of claim 10, wherein the logic is configured to cause the server apparatus, in response to operation of the logic, to determine the preferred delivery strategy based at least in part upon a priority of an associated pending interview dialog.

15. A system, comprising:

a network interface;

one or more processors coupled to the network interface;

a memory coupled to the network interface and the one or more processors, the memory having instructions stored thereon, which in response to execution by the one or more processors, cause the system to;

facilitate formation of a medical-care related communication by collecting information related to a content and a context of a medical-care related communication, wherein collecting information includes an analysis of an externally-sourced transmission and conversion of the externally-sourced transmission into a form including a system-compatible format;

facilitate determination of whether to convert the form into an interview to be included in the medical-care related communication;

facilitate the delivery attempt of the medical-care related communication according to a preferred delivery strategy; and

check whether the medical-care related communication was delivered.

16. The system of claim 15, wherein the instructions to facilitate the delivery attempt of the medical-care related communication include directions which cause the system to automatically select and transmit the medical-care related communication on a preferred delivery channel via the network interface.

17. The system of claim 15, wherein the network interface includes a local area network (LAN) or wide area network (WAN) interface.

18. The system of claim 15, wherein the system comprises an application server for processing respective data communications under pre-assigned service-organization designations.

19. The system of claim 18, wherein the memory further comprises a database for storing:

respective, communication processing rules of respective ones of said pre-assigned service-organization designations, wherein said application server is configured to use the communication processing rules of a given one of said service-organization designations to control instantiation of deliverable interviews formulated under responsibility of the given service-organization designation.

20. An article of manufacture, comprising:

a tangible computer-readable medium having stored thereon machine-executable instructions that in response to execution by a processor of an apparatus, cause the apparatus to perform operations including;

facilitating formation of a content and a context of a medical-care related communication by collecting information related to the content and the context of the medical-care related communication, wherein the collecting information includes analyzing an externally-sourced transmission and conversion of the externally-sourced transmission into a form;

determining whether to convert the form into an interview to be included in the medical-care related communication;

facilitating a delivery attempt of the medical-care related communication according to a preferred delivery strategy; and

checking whether the medical-care related communication was delivered.