Card – picture – or sign exhibiting – Check – label – or tag – Identification bracelet
Patent
1996-05-16
1998-06-02
Dorner, Kenneth J.
Card, picture, or sign exhibiting
Check, label, or tag
Identification bracelet
40665, 40640, 24 16PB, G09F 314, B65D 6300
Patent
active
057584435
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a support device of information that can be associated with hospital in- or out-patients for their automatic and univocal identification.
The need is known of being able to associate in a univocal manner with a given patient, either a hospital in-patient or subject to an out-patient treatment, everything that derives from him or her, such as for example a biological sample to be analyzed or a document related to an instrumental test, or referring to him, such as for example a drug or an instrumetal therapeutic treatment.
This need can be met by automating in a closed cycle the different steps through which the patient is made to go, starting with his identification at the time of admittance up to, for example, the taking of a blood or other biological sample and to the execution of a test, to the administration of a drug or to the execution of a therapy.
In the international patent application No. WO 92/01268, No. WO 92/10985 and No. WO 93/08735, all in the name of the applicant, it is highlighted that the step of patient identification, recurring and necessary every time a medical act is performed, is the source of serious, sometime irreparable, errors; this is due to the fact that the patient is frequently identified indirectly, for example by the number of the occupied bed or with other fictitious and interchangeable markings, or because there is a temporal discontinuity between identification and the execution of the medical act itself. This translates into a possible switch of information relating to different patients.
In the first of the mentioned patent applications a method, and a related apparatus, is described, for associating to a patient identified by a personal code, in a univocal and permanent manner, some containers for medical use, for example test tubes for containing biological samples to be analyzed.
In the second of the mentioned patent applications the problem of administering drugs to patients is tackled and solved.
The third of the mentioned patent applications describes a method for associating the identification code of a patient to diagnostic images in general, such as for example the results of an X-ray test.
The solutions described in the three mentioned patent applications are based on the existence of a device that is attached to the patient and that comprises a support on which information useful for a univocal identification of the patient himself is recorded. Every medical act to which the patient is subjected requires as the initial step the identification of the patient through the automatic reading of the information recorded on such support, identification that is thus ensured independently of the co-operation of the patient himself or of errors caused by inattention of the health operators.
The object of the present invention is to obtain a support device of information, that can be associated with patients for their automatic and univocal identification, that can be used in combination with the apparata described in the abovementioned patents.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
According to the present invention, such object is attained thanks to a device for the identification of a hospital in- or out-patient, characterized in that it comprises a strip of flexible material that can be wound on the end of limbs or round the neck of said patient like a bracelet or collar, and an element for clamping the two free ends of said strip together comprising a first part and a second part co-operating one with the other and with said free ends of the strip to ensure a permanent adjustable clamping of the bracelet or of the collar, where said first part has a flat surface suitable for receiving and storing for a subsequent reading information suitable for the identification of said patient.
Thanks to the present invention, it is possible to obtain a support device for information that can be associated in a permanent manner with hospital in- or out-patients at the time when they enter the hospital's in- or out-patient circ
REFERENCES:
patent: 1851491 (1932-03-01), Brown
patent: 2846796 (1958-08-01), Polzin
patent: 3397430 (1968-08-01), Pearl
patent: 3818897 (1974-06-01), Smith
patent: 4464854 (1984-08-01), Hall
patent: 4506415 (1985-03-01), Swift
patent: 5153416 (1992-10-01), Neeley
patent: 5377387 (1995-01-01), Freed
patent: 5537719 (1996-07-01), Freed
Cole Thomas W.
Davis Cassandra
Dorner Kenneth J.
Ferguson Jr. Gerald J.
Healtech S.A.
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