Surgery – Diagnostic testing
Reexamination Certificate
1999-07-02
2001-04-24
Hindenburg, Max (Department: 3736)
Surgery
Diagnostic testing
Reexamination Certificate
active
06221010
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to the field of monitoring systems, and more particularly to home medical supervision and monitoring systems.
2. Description of Related Art
The median age of the world's population is aging. Modern medicine and medical techniques have allowed people to live much longer and it is not unusual for individuals to reach the age of 90-100 years of age. Statistics indicate 80 million people in the United States, or 1 in 5, will be categorized as senior citizens by the year 2050. At the same time, the average lifetime work cycle has shortened with people retiring at an earlier age, often as young as 50 or 55 years old. Accordingly, lifetime savings and retirement plans can be exhausted by the time an individual reaches 65 or 70 years of age. When an elder person is no longer able to live independently, the younger generation is often unable or unwilling to take the person into their home and provide necessary care. Therefore, the elderly are often placed into senior citizen care facilities, quickly exhausting their savings and retirement plans. Without sufficient independent funds, state and federal governments often have to pay for the individual's care. Often the decision to place an elderly parent or relative into a long-term care facility follows a health crisis when it is determined that the patient will require medical monitoring and supervision by professional health care personnel. A number of systems have attempted to help the health care recipient in their own home, alleviating the need for personnel-supervised separate heath care facilities.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,440,301 entitled Intelligent Alerting and Locating Communication System uses a hardware implementation of a scanner to detect information by polling remote devices, either hard-wired or over a radio frequency link. The polling sequence transmits an address and only the unit that has the corresponding address responds, returning the “normal/abnormal” status of that particular sensing device. The information is returned to a hardware computer controller. The software running in a personal computer can retrieve this information and uses this information to generate a display showing the location of the sensors or detectors having abnormal states.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,291,191 entitled Medicine Dispenser is a selfcontained device with a number of drawers that contain medication to be taken at predefined times as monitored by a clock. The drawer opens at the given time and a sound mechanism broadcasts an audible description of the medication.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,696,492 is to a medical alarming system that delivers an alarm to a nurse in response to an abnormal change occurring during the monitoring of physiological signals of a person confined to bed in a hospital or at home. A video camera provides the nurse at a nursing station with a view of the individual if and when an alarm occurs. The system is equipped with three devices to get the attention of the nurse or attendant: a physical display; a speaker for an audible alarm; and a signal sent to a pager.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
An advantage of the present invention is to provide a medical supervision and monitoring system to help individuals needing health care to remain in their home surroundings and enhance their independence of personnel-intensive care.
A related advantage of the present invention is to provide a medical supervision and monitoring system to allow individuals needing health care to remain in their home surroundings while receiving necessary medical monitoring, supervision, and care.
Another advantage of the present invention is to provide a medical supervision and monitoring system that is reliable, yet flexible.
Yet another advantage of the present invention is to provide a medical supervision and monitoring system that takes greater advantage of software control in order to keep failure to a minimum.
In accordance with an embodiment of the invention, a medical supervision and monitoring system for individual patients comprises a medical monitoring system to monitor at least one medical condition of a patient that is operatively connected to a computer control means; an environmental sensing system having at least one sensor to detect at least one condition selected from the group consisting of: power, motion, fire, smoke, carbon monoxide, window and door, said detector in operative communication with the computer control means; and a computer based system having computer control means operatively connected to the medical monitoring system and the environmental sensing system to detect abnormal states and transmit a responsive action dependent thereon.
REFERENCES:
patent: 5440301 (1995-08-01), Evans
patent: 5696492 (1997-12-01), Sakamaki et al.
patent: 5785650 (1998-07-01), Akasaka et al.
patent: 5911132 (1999-06-01), Sloane
patent: 5954641 (1999-09-01), Kehr et al.
patent: 5967975 (1999-10-01), Ridgeway
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