Data processing: measuring – calibrating – or testing – Measurement system – Performance or efficiency evaluation
Reexamination Certificate
2003-02-19
2004-11-16
Barlow, John (Department: 2863)
Data processing: measuring, calibrating, or testing
Measurement system
Performance or efficiency evaluation
C702S183000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06820037
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Ideally, in the field of neuro-psychology, a trained, fully qualified expert should have the opportunity to spend a substantial amount of time with each client. This time should include a significant amount of observation and testing, on a one-on-one basis. Unfortunately, there exists a chronic shortage of such professionals and, therefore, the amount of time that can be spent with each client is very limited. In addition, there is a shortage of testing materials whereby a professional can monitor the testing of each client without being physically present but nonetheless in control of the testing.
There are, in existence and in use, many types of standardized neuro-psychological tests carried out through the medium of computers; but these have a significant drawback of being generally rather static. These are so described, not simply because the contents are monotonous, but, also, because the method of application is rather rigidly implemented. Each test needs to be substantially completed before proceeding to the next without any consideration of the nature of the answers or the reactions of the client.
Furthermore, when these tests are arranged into batteries of tests, the batteries become even more static, if not positively unwieldy. The reason for this is that setting up batteries of tests is done in a standardized manner and, only after the battery of tests are substantially completed by a client, does the neuro-psychologist review the results.
It should also be explained that a testing procedure carried out under the direct supervision of an experienced and expert professional neuro-psychologist is not carried out in the static manner described, but with continuous monitoring. If the professional tester reaches conclusions prior to the end of a test, the client will be redirected to further tests, rather than be allowed to proceed with a rigid regime of testing. It would, therefore, be of substantial advantage if there existed a methodology that could construct the necessary batteries of tests, in the same manner and using the same approach, that would be utilized by a group of well qualified and expert neuro-psychologists.
Furthermore, there are a number of factors inhibiting the growth and improvements of neuro-psychological testing, most particularly because the validation of tests is extremely costly, very slow and, perhaps most important of all, very time consuming. It would be most useful if new tests and new ways of testing could easily be validated.
The problems associated with validating neuro-psychological tests are that validation must explain a correlation to known instructions, must provide results with a usably narrow distribution and, hence, the ability to decide the result.
It is not always obvious that tests are a structured means of capturing a description of how an individual performs in a given set of controlled and observable circumstances. This statement underlines the basic problem. Neuro-psychological experts are not able to invest sufficient time with each client to be able to fully perceive the full and detailed nature of each problem. Ideally, there is an important need to understand, precisely, the nature of the client and his special needs.
Therefore, it would be of significant importance and advantage, if means existed to embody the metrics from validated tests together with the expertise of time-constrained experts and bring such formed and developed tests to bear in a field so desperately in need of advancement. It would be of even greater significance, if all this could be brought to bear utilizing normal routine activities of each client.
A specific objective of every neuro-psychologist is to help clients with their normal routine activities. Because such professionals do not have the time available to, the issue of a new and highly useful methodology of testing by monitoring normal routine activities on an ongoing basis, must come to the fore.
High level certification as a neuro-psychology professional, such as a neurologist, involves a long and complex course of study and apprenticeship. Ultimately this course of study is only successfully completed by a small number of individuals. Few patients are fortunate enough to receive the full benefits that may be provided by these certified professionals, essentially because there are to few such professionals available, and their time is over subscribed by the great numbers of patients needing their help.
Today, neuro-psychology professional services are restricted to four substantially small sub-populations, of the greater population of patients, who could benefit from proper care. These sub-populations are: persons needing screening, severely disabled persons such as accident or stroke patients, extremely wealthy persons who can purchase these scarce services at any price, and substantially random small groups who happen to be “adopted” into some funded neuro-psychological research study.
Even within these groups, patients are not always able to receive optimal neurological care because of the time required for each test and its analysis, the time required to develop new tests, and the time required for the determination of the exact combination and sequence of tests to properly evaluate a given individual, which sequence may be different at each examination of the individual. Neuro-psychology professionals must spend a substantial amount of time administering tests that often yield little or no useful data. They cannot spend the vast amount of time which would enable them to observe patients in various circumstances, including routine normal activities, observation which would yield information enabling assessment of an individual's condition at a given point in time, detecting the appearance of a new condition, and perceiving the changes in and progress of a known condition.
Neuro-psychology professionals are furthermore faced with limitations in developing new tests to diagnose specific conditions more accurately or quickly, again, often because of time and cost limitations. The neuro-psychology professional has limited means available to him to validate new tests, or even to correlate information gained from the performance of routine activities by an individual under normal conditions or those experiencing changes in such conditions.
In cases when a neuro-psychology professional does develop and validate a new test, he is faced with a further problem; that of collecting payment, or royalties, for the use of the test by others.
Given these pressing circumstances, there are clearly several distinct needs in the present art. There is a need for ways and means of successfully training more persons in the complex applied-knowledge practices of clinical neuro-psychology, leading to an increase in the number of properly certified neuro-psychology professionals. Independently, there is also a need for ways and means of successfully extending the benefits of care, under the auspices of certified neuro-psychology professionals, to respectively larger populations of patients, who substantially need their help, albeit perhaps to more varying degrees than members of the four select sub-populations that are described above.
Neuro-psychology professionals undergo a long, complex and arduous course of study and apprenticeship. All too few succeed. This results in a very limited number of clients, of a potentially very large number of clients, being able to benefit from these important professionals. Unfortunately, even this small number of clients only benefit to a relatively limited degree. One of the factors that exacerbates this limit, is the availability of up-to-date and normal routine activity tests. Another factor is the limited range of conditions that will yield to the relatively out-of-date testing methods available. For the neuro-psychological professional, the development and proper validation of normal activity tests, gives rise to the difficulty of financial recovery of the costs involved as well as a return on the investment of time and substantial ef
Baker & Botts LLP
Barlow John
Neurotrax Corporation
Washburn Douglas N
LandOfFree
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