Data processing: financial – business practice – management – or co – Automated electrical financial or business practice or... – Health care management
Reexamination Certificate
1998-07-24
2001-11-06
Millin, V. (Department: 2164)
Data processing: financial, business practice, management, or co
Automated electrical financial or business practice or...
Health care management
C705S002000, C600S300000, C600S301000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06314405
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a medical log, and more particularly, to an electronic, hand-held, easy-to-use, icon-driven medical log that can be intuitively and easily used by patients and caretakers, particularly those without any computer-related skills.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Patients with certain medical conditions, diseases and/or chronic disorders are often required to make regular visits to a doctor. During such visits, the patient is typically required to recall and describe any problems, symptoms or ailments that occurred since the last visit. In response to the patient's input, the doctor keeps track of the patient's progress and often prescribes medication or some other form of treatment. Many patents, however, have difficulty accurately recounting this information to the doctor. Often patients and caretakers forget about the time and occurrence of a particular pain or ailment, or the patient is unable to communicate the information to the doctor because of a medical condition. A doctor may therefore fail to recognize a medical problem or misdiagnose and treat a different medical condition.
Medical logs have been used by patients and caretakers to help keep track and record a variety of health related incidences of a patient. U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,307,263 and 5,691,932 both disclose hand-held microprocessor-based health monitoring systems. With both of these devices, the patient or healthcare provider is required to manipulate a number of keys or switches to enter information and to cause a variety of symbols and icons to appear on a display. These devices, as a consequence, are not intuitive to use. As a result, certain patients such as the elderly, children, persons with little or no computer-related skills, or those too sick or incapacitated to learn may have difficulty using these devices.
Accordingly, an electronic, hand-held, easy-to-use, icon driven medical log that can be used by the elderly, children, the sick, the incapacitated, and those with minimal computer skills is needed.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to an electronic, hand-held, easy-to-use, icon driven medical log that can be easily used by the elderly, children, the sick, the incapacitated and those with minimal computer skills. The medical log includes a first set of icons each representative of a different bodily condition and a second set of icons each representative of a different bodily location. A third set of icons is also provided to control the operation of the medical log. The medical log is initialized by programming the date and time into the device using the control icons. Once the medical log is initialized, a patient or a caretaker can make entries into the medical log by entering a bodily condition by selecting one of the first set of icons. The bodily location where the patient is experiencing discomfort is then entered into the medical log by selecting one of the second set of icons. The date and time the condition and bodily location was entered into the medical log is automatically stored in the log for later retrieval. Entries into the medical log can be made at prescheduled times each day or whenever the patient is experiencing discomfort. By consistently entering such information, an accurate log including the date, time, condition and location of the patient's ailments are recorded. Since information is entered into the log in a simple two-step operation using easy-to-understand icons, almost any patient or caretaker, regardless of their lack of computer skills or medical condition, can successfully use the present invention.
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Boos et al., “a new, light weight fetal telemetry system”, Hewlett-Packard Journal, v46, n6, p82 (12), Dec., 1995.
Kazimi Hani M.
Millin V.
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