Surgery – Diagnostic testing
Reexamination Certificate
1999-03-09
2001-04-24
O'Connor, Cary (Department: 3736)
Surgery
Diagnostic testing
C128S904000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06221009
ABSTRACT:
TECHNICAL FIELD
The present invention relates to a dispersed-type testing/measuring system. The dispersed-type test/measuring system can be used as a dispersed-type health care system in which a plurality of terminal units are disposed in a dispersed manner at residents of patients or small-scale clinics for sending biochemical data via communication lines to a central controlling system where the above data are maintained as personalized clinical data for each of the patients.
BACKGROUND ART
Therapy to patients suffering from diabetes, liver diseases or other chronic diseases usually takes a long period of time. At the present time, a patient of such a disease typically receive the therapy as an out patient. A problem here is that the patient has to make frequent visit to a hospital at a cost of physical burden if the disease is to be monitored closely. On the other hand, if the patient makes less frequent visit in order to relieve the physical burden of visiting, then the close monitoring of the disease becomes impossible with an increasing risk of inadequacy in treatment.
Meanwhile, a number of systems for providing health care or for helping treatment of an at-home patient have been proposed. For example, the Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2-279056 discloses a system in which blood sugar level data of diabetics are collected through a telephone line to a microcomputer for accumulating the data individually per patient and maintaining the data as a group data. Further, the Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 4-63449 discloses another system in which outputs from a sensor attached to a patient's body are sent through a modem to a host computer installed at a hospital for issuing prescriptions. Further, the Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 8-17906 discloses another system in which a toilet bowl at a home is attached with a stool testing sensor for sending excretory information to a monitoring center via a telephone line. Still Further, the Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 3-198832 discloses another system in which diagnosis and health check are made through an audio-visual system such as the Hi-Vision system.
Each of the above prior art technologies falls into a criterion in which a medical facility or a monitoring center monitors health status of the patient while the patient is allowed to stay at home. Each of the above prior art technologies can relieve the patient of the physical burden of making visits to the medical facility. However, none of the above prior art technologies takes patients's individual differences into account when maintaining the clinical data, but instead health care instructions are made with reference only to norm values from healthy people collected as data for a group. As a result, it is difficult to provide appropriate treatment if clinical data of the patient show a change which is abnormal for this particular patient yet the change is still within a normal range obtained for the group.
Further, according to the prior art, a huge system comprising a clinical testing apparatus, a personal computer and peripherals has to be installed at a home of patient for example. This puts an economic limit to the number of patients who can afford the health care service, limiting the number of samples, which makes difficult to perform statistical maintenance of the clinical data accurately and reliably. There is another problem. Specifically, the terminal unit installed at each end such as the patient s home is calibrated initially and is capable of detecting clinical information accurately. With time however, output level of the terminal can be out of the calibration depending on environmental and operating conditions of the terminal. This reduces accuracy and reliability of the collected data, and in order to correct this problem, the terminal installed at the patient's home for example must be periodically checked and adjusted. However, if the number of terminals increases, it will become increasingly difficult to keep sending personnel for providing such periodic services.
DISCLOSURE OF THE INVENTION
It is therefore an object of the present invention to simplify the terminal unit for the dispersed-type testing/measuring system in which a plurality of testing/measuring terminal units are connected to a central controlling unit via a communication line.
Another object of the present invention is to make possible to provide more sophisticated health care to individual patients when the above dispersed-type testing/measuring system is applied as a dispersed-type health care system in which data collected at the patient's home by the terminal unit are maintained as clinical data by the central controlling unit.
Still another object of the present invention is to provide means for the central controlling unit to maintain data accurately in response to characteristic differences among the terminal units as well as changes in characteristics over time in each terminal unit.
A dispersed-type testing/measuring system provided by a first aspect of the present invention comprises a central controlling unit, and a plurality of terminal units each accessible to the central controlling unit via a communication line. Each of the terminal units includes a crude data collecting portion for collecting crude data from samples, and a data transmitting means for sending the data collected by the crude data collecting portion. The central controlling unit includes a data calculating means for generating measurement data by making calculation on the crude data sent from each terminal unit.
It should be noted here that what is meant by the term crude data collected by the crude data collecting portion of each terminal unit is an output before having significance as measurement data. Specifically, the crude data is an output from an optical, electrochemical, optical-acoustic, or other measuring means suitably selected for an object of measurement, as a conversion into electrical signals. The crude data thus collected is sent by the data transmitting means to the central controlling unit via the communication line, where analysis, adjustment, calibration and other operations are performed for finally obtaining the measurement data. Thus, the terminal unit of the dispersed-type testing/measuring system according to the present invention only includes minimum of functions for generating crude data by measuring test object samples, and for sending the crude data to the central controlling unit via the communication line, being very simple in configuration, and inexpensive in price.
According to a preferred embodiment, the crude data collecting portion further includes a maintenance-purpose crude data collecting means for collecting crude data for maintenance purpose by measuring a standard sample. Further, the central controlling unit includes a data calculating means for generating measurement data by making calculation on the crude measurement data received from each terminal unit, and a data adjusting means for adjusting the crude measurement data by comparing the maintenance-purpose crude data received from each terminal unit with a standard, or adjusting the measurement data by comparing maintenance-purpose data calculated from the maintenance-purpose crude data with a standard.
Each terminal unit collects crude measurement data by measuring a test object specimen. At the same time, predetermined standard samples are also measured for collecting the maintenance-purpose crude data. The crude measurement data and the maintenance-purpose crude data are sent to the central controlling unit via the communication line. In a system according to the present invention, a plurality of terminal units are connected to the central processing unit via the communication line. If the central controlling unit is to perform statistical processing on the measurement data, the number of the terminal unit disposed may be very huge. Even in such a case, the standard samples provided to each of the terminal unit are those of a same standard.
Now, the data collecting portion of the terminal unit
Doi Shigeru
Uenoyama Harumi
Yamaguchi Yoshinori
Astorino Michael
Kyoto Dai-ichi Kagaku Co. Ltd.
Merchant & Gould P.C.
O'Connor Cary
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