Data processing: financial – business practice – management – or co – Automated electrical financial or business practice or... – Health care management
Reexamination Certificate
1997-12-01
2001-08-07
Cosimano, Edward R. (Department: 2161)
Data processing: financial, business practice, management, or co
Automated electrical financial or business practice or...
Health care management
C707S793000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06272468
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The field of application of the invention is “human medicine”, wherein there exists a continuing need to further understand and demonstrate the human body biochemical reactions and resultant physiological functions for a variety of urgent purposes, as summarized in the expansion of the CHART System name. “Chart”, the term commonly used by clinical practitioners and other healthcare delivery organization staff to refer to a patient's medical record in its typical paper/hard-copy form, is used herein as an acronym (devised by the inventor of the instant application) to designate the principal areas of medical and healthcare activity—
c
linical,
h
euristic,
a
dministrative,
r
esearch and
t
eaching—on which the subject of the instant application is designed to have facilitating otherwise beneficial affects.
The field of implementation of the invention is “computer science” in general and “Web-object programming” in particular (for which the Java language is a typical but non-exclusive example of an applicable programming language). The object-oriented software attributes of “inheritance”, “encapsulation” and “polymorphism” (described below) provide the information system language characteristics and processing capabilities required to implement the features and functions necessitated by the field of application.
2. Description of the Related Technology
A non-exhaustive review of the medical informatics literature and the patent file search described above reveals that a major category of the related technology, embracing a preponderance of existing computer-based representations of human physiology, are representations of physiological function and/or anatomical structure localized to a particular medical specialty, pathology and/or human body morphological component (e.g.—central nervous system structure, cardiac function, genome mapping).
A second category of computer-based representations, typically as or more specific and narrow in scope than the first, provides automated diagnostic assistance or other clinical decision support through the evolutionary application of mathematicaiboolean algorithms or, more recently, expert system or neural network technology (e.g.—the “HELP System” developed at Latter Day Saints Hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah, late in the 1960s and subsequently purchased, modified and marketed by several national hospital information system vendors).
A third category of medical computer systems is called the “electronic medical record” (EMR) or “computer-based patient record” (CPR)—the principal focus of attention during the past two decades, primarily through the efforts of the Computer-based Patient Record Institute (CPRI). Systems in this category address the issues of medical record content, utility and confidentiality in an effort to define, design and develop a computer-based “chart”, the common practice name for the paper-based medical record as defined above. The principal purpose of the computer-based chart is to make patient-specific information available to clinicians when and where it is needed in order to facilitate more efficient, effective and (therefore) economical pathology diagnosis and treatment, and ongoing patient care including clinical monitoring.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The CHART System (herein after referred to as “the System”), which is the subject of the instant application, features secure but generally available access via any Internet-based World Wide Web (a/k/a “the Web”) connection to a real-time interactive physiological model of the human body and associated computer-based patient record to provide capabilities of four types.
1) The System includes features and functions for the establishment and manipulation of the human physiology model for both real (e.g.—patient-specific, at selected points in time) and/or hypothetical (e.g.—research or prospective/what-if modeling) total human systems.
2) The System includes features and functions for the establishment and maintenance of a medical chart used to described the physiological information determined and demonstrated by the companion instance of the human body mode.
3) The System leverages the extensive and varied array of Internet-based multi-media information by invoking, on user demand or automatically, those information resources most appropriate to supplement the model data; these resources might include multi-media anatomical information (e.g.—gross anatomy structure and function depiction) or diagnostic/therapeutic descriptive information (e.g.—electrocardiography (EKG) and electroencephalography (EEG) tracings), or whatever may be currently available at authoritative Internet sites.
4) The System provides an integrated email facility for communication of model and/or medical record information, at the discretion of the user, to any holder of a currently active email account; this facility enables the user to attach designated information to an email message using the currently acceptable degree of data encryption (e.g.—at the date of the instant application submission, 124-bit “PSGP” encryption).
A case-specific copy of the human body physiology model is a software construct that includes the functionality (i.e.—the methods or behaviors) of the general model and the manifestations (i.e.—the properties or states) of a specific and stand-alone “case”, examples of the latter of which include:
1) an actual patient's baseline
ormal condition,
2) an actual patient's current/pathological condition,
3) an actual patient's hypothetical or “what-if” condition following contemplated administration of a new medication, change in diet and/or other introduction of a foreign chemical substance (as in poison trauma),
4) an experimental protocol-specific case, pre- or post-treatment, or
5) a clinical trial subject condition, pre- or post-protocol administration.
In response to appropriate application of these tools to record biochemical, nutrient, toxin or other “foreign substance” input to the System model at one or more sites of introduction/absorption, the System determines and then demonstrates in real time the resulting effects on the instantiated model at any/all other anatomic sites for which user interfaces are provided (planned to include all clinically useful or significant sites of physical examination, test application and specima collection.
In a practical application, the System can be applied by a licensed clinician to an instantiation of any appropriate case (as defined above) at the genome, organelle, cell, tissue, organ, system and/or whole body level as an aide to health maintenance, diagnosis and treatment. To enhance the benefit of the model output, multi-media data displays consistent with the subject data types (e.g.—audio for heart sounds, graphics for EEG, etc.) are made available on request or automatically via “links” to commercial, not-for-profit, public agency or other Internet/Web sites and/or information sources resident on the System's server platform, the programmed logical pathways to which are specified and easily modifiable in the System. In addition, the System architecture provides interfaces and links to other facilities for information management support of clinical procedures, ancillary to the patient care process (e.g.—pharmacology compounding and dose determination, (ab)normal growth and development assessment, genetic predisposition determination, etc.), to the extent that this information is available on other authoritative Internet sites for which electronic “paths” can be specified.
Notwithstanding their broad scope, ready accessibility and rich content, the CHART System features/functions are intended to serve only as medical education and clinical decision support aides to licensed clinician users in their diagnostic, therapeutic and patient care activities. The CHART System purpose is neither to preempt nor to minimize the professional participation and responsibility of the licensed clinical user in the diagnostic, therapeutic and care processes; but
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