Data processing: artificial intelligence – Knowledge processing system – Knowledge representation and reasoning technique
Reexamination Certificate
1998-11-04
2001-11-06
Chaki, Kakali (Department: 2122)
Data processing: artificial intelligence
Knowledge processing system
Knowledge representation and reasoning technique
C706S045000, C706S046000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06314415
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Technical Field
This invention relates generally to systems that produce computer-generated forms, such as standardized documents that must be filed with government agencies, legal documents, employment-related documents, and the like. More particularly, the invention provides an expert system-based approach for prompting users for information and generating forms that avoids the need for hardcoded graphical user interface (GUI) software.
2. Related Information
Companies today endure an enormous paperwork burden, much of it in the form of standardized documents that must be submitted to government agencies or shared with other entities such as credit bureaus. As one example, insurance companies seeking to have their insurance agents licensed in several states must fill out different application forms for each state, wherein the different forms often require supplying redundant and irrelevant information. As another example, an employment action such as hiring a new employee may require filling out information on separate forms for health insurance, retirement plans, tax filings, and state and federal administrative filings. As yet another example, food manufacturers that package food in containers must report how they sterilize food and file documents with the Food and Drug Administration, wherein a separate form is required for every combination of product, style, and package type.
The multiple forms that must be completed for the various transactions of often contain redundant and irrelevant information. For example, a basic employment application may require supplying an employee's name, date of birth, social security number, and marital status. A separate health insurance form may also require this same information, plus the name of a preferred doctor, a spouse's name, and a spouse's social security number. Requiring that an employee specify his or her name on the separate forms is duplicative. Moreover, if an employee's marital status was indicated on the employment application as being “single,” entering a spouse's name and social security number on the health insurance form is irrelevant and unnecessary. In other words, certain information on the various forms may be irrelevant or already known based on an earlier entry supplied by a user entering data.
One approach for solving some of the aforementioned problems is to write customized computer software that presents a user with a computerized version of each paper form, thus facilitating data entry. The user interface could be tailored to resemble the paper form, or it could be different but still generate a paper facsimile of the original paper form with the user-supplied information printed thereon. In an employment setting, for example, an employee could enter data on separate computer-generated screens and have the computer generate a populated employment application, a health benefits form, and income tax witholding form.
There are several problems with the foregoing “brute force” computerized approach to forms processing. First, redundant and overlapping information from different forms will not necessarily be eliminated. For example, requiring the employee to re-enter his or her name, once for each different form, is unnecessary. Second, irrelevant information is still presented to the user. For example, if an employee enters his marital status as “single,” the user may still be presented with an entry space for entering “spouse name.” Finally, the software (typically written in C, COBOL, or other high-level language) must be customized, coded, and retested any time there is a change to a form. This recoding and retesting incurs high labor costs and requires that companies adopt proprietary systems that can quickly become obsolete or vulnerable to a software vendor who goes out of business. Even so-called “context-sensitive” user interface techniques, assuming they could be applied to forms processing applications, would not address the foregoing problems. For these and other reasons, reliance on custom software to handle data entry for prompting users for information and for printing the forms is undesirable.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention overcomes the aforementioned problems by providing features that facilitate data entry, avoid redundant and unnecessary information from graphical user interfaces, and permit changes to the user interfaces (and resulting forms) without relying on “hardcoded” software. In various embodiments, the inventive system includes a rule-based expert system and method that uses high-level rules for determining what graphical interface features should be displayed to a user at a particular point in the process. These rules can be written in a natural language or a high-level language such as PROLOG and used in an inference engine to drive the graphical user interface. The rules can be changed easily without recoding and testing of computer software, and without specialized computer software knowledge. Consequently, people other than programmers can customize and change a graphical user interface easily and without errors. Additionally, the use of a logic-based expert system approach permits searching for solutions in a decision tree and supports self-modification during execution.
Certain embodiments of the present invention include a scanner and related software that captures data fields from existing paper forms; a database for storing field definitions and their relationships together with rules for determining which user interface features to display at a particular point in a data entry sequence; an inference engine for executing the rules; a graphical user interface component that provides the user with dynamically generated screen configurations based on execution of the rules (which are fired based on inferences drawn from data the user has entered); and a printing component that generates paper and/or electronic forms based on the user's inputs and the execution of the rules. Other embodiments of the invention include a method for using a graphical user interface to dynamically represent information based on previous responses including steps of displaying a first set of information for which data selection is required; using the first set of information to fire rules in an inference engine, wherein the rules produce conclusions that are used to dynamically generate a second set of information for which data selection is required; storing the results of the first and second sets of information as facts that may satisfy predicates of other rules; and generating one or more forms using the first and second sets of information.
Additional features provided in certain embodiments include the ability to display a transaction-level user screen including a first plurality of user prompts arranged according to an assigned priority level and dynamically generated based on user inputs, and one or more form-level user screens each including a second plurality of user prompts arranged in priority order and dynamically generated based on information supplied on the transaction-level screen.
Other features and advantages of the invention will become apparent with reference to the following detailed description and the figures.
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Collet: “Definition Et Manipulation De
Banner & Witcoff , Ltd.
CCH Incorporated
Chaki Kakali
Khatri Anil
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