“Graphical Representations Of Time-Ordered Data” in Patent Application Approval Process (USPTO 20220147238): Patent Application
2022 MAY 27 (NewsRx) -- By a
This patent application has not been assigned to a company or institution.
The following quote was obtained by the news editors from the background information supplied by the inventors: “In order to comply with laws governing information security, such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), certain institutions must maintain audit logs that track how often customer electronic records are accessed, the reasons for accessing the records (e.g., documentation, modification, etc.), and the identities of users who are accessing the electronic records. Examples of institutions include healthcare facilities, financial institutions, educational institutions, and the like.
“Most commercial tools for querying audit logs employ some form of report generation based loosely on the concept of relational queries. Many of the reports are batch-oriented in nature because of the computational and input/output demands necessary to conduct the underlying queries. As well, these reports are often presented in the form of two-dimensional tables. While these reports may be sufficient to meet information security requirements, they are not necessarily intuitive and efficient for end users nor do they facilitate the exploration of audit events related to a particular user.”
In addition to the background information obtained for this patent application, NewsRx journalists also obtained the inventor’s summary information for this patent application: “This Summary is provided to introduce a selection of concepts in a simplified form that are further described below in the Detailed Description. This Summary is not intended to identify key features or essential features of the claimed subject matter, nor is it intended to be used as an aid in determining the scope of the claimed subject matter. The present invention is defined by the claims.
“In brief and at a high level, this disclosure describes, among other things, methods, systems, and computer-storage media for presenting graphical representations of time-ordered audit events. The time-ordered audit events may represent instances where customer electronic records have been accessed by a party-of-interest during a specified time frame. The electronic records may include financial records, educational records, health records, insurance records, and the like.
“In one aspect, the party-of-interest is a clinician and the audit events represent instances where the clinician has accessed patient electronic medical records (EMRs). For example, a healthcare facility may become suspicious of the activities of the clinician, or a patient may have filed a complaint alleging some sort of privacy breach. In response to either of these two situations, the healthcare facility may wish to view an audit log of EMR accesses during a specified time frame and details associated with each access. An intuitive and easy-to-use graphical user interface (GUI) is needed to facilitate this process.
“As such, the present invention provides for a GUI that utilizes, in one aspect, timelines that enable a user to select a desired time frame, a central node representing the party-of-interest, and one or more peripheral nodes representing parties having electronic records that have been accessed by the party-of-interest during the selected time frame. As used throughout this application, the term “party-of-interest” refers to a person employed or associated with a facility maintaining an audit log and who has access rights to electronic records kept by the facility. Exemplary parties-of-interest include clinicians, bank officers, teachers, administrators, and the like. The term “party” refers to an entity who receives services provided by the facility. As such, the party may refer to a customer, a patient, a student, and the like. The size of the peripheral nodes provides an indication of how frequently the electronic records were accessed. As well, both the central node and the peripheral nodes are actionable allowing a user to quickly gather information regarding, for example, the identity of the party-of-interest, the parties, and/or options for viewing additional information regarding the electronic record access.
“In another aspect, the present invention provides for a GUI that utilizes one or more timelines configured to enable a user to select a time frame, a central node representing a party (e.g., a patient who is alleging a privacy breach), and one or more peripheral nodes representing parties-of-interest who have accessed the party’s electronic records during the specified time frame. The size of the peripheral nodes indicates how frequently the party’s electronic record was accessed by the node’s respective party-of-interest. Like above, both the central node and the peripheral nodes are actionable allowing a user to access information regarding, for example, the identity of the parties-of-interest, the party, and/or options for viewing additional information regarding the electronic record access.
“In yet another aspect, the present invention provides for a GUI that utilizes one or more timelines configured to enable a user to select a desired time frame, a display area providing an indication of a party and a party-of-interest, and a clockwise timeline having one or more icons overlaid at different points in time; the bounds of the clockwise timeline correspond to the specified time frame. The icons represent different types of audit events associated with the party and the party-of-interest. For instance, using healthcare as an example, one audit event may be the clinician accessing the patient’s EMR to order a medication, while another audit event may be the clinician accessing the patient’s EMR to document a clinical note. The icons are actionable, and interaction with an icon can initiate the presentation of a summary of the associated audit event.”
The claims supplied by the inventors are:
“1. One or more non-transitory computer-storage media having computer-executable instructions embodied thereon that, when executed by a computing device, cause the computing device to perform a method for dynamically displaying information related to electronic records on a graphical user interface (GUI) and for facilitating an efficient and intuitive exploration of the electronic records related to information being dynamically displayed on the GUI, the method comprising: receiving a first request for a graphical representation of information related to a set of electronic records associated with a party-of-interest or a party, wherein the party-of-interest is an individual having electronically accessed at least one electronic record in the set of electronic records and the party is an individual having an electronic record in the set of electronic records that has been electronically accessed by one or more parties-of-interest; in response to receiving the first request, rendering the graphical representation on the GUI by utilizing data associated with the set of electronic records; dynamically displaying on the GUI, a timeline having a first range representing a timeframe corresponding to a creation of the set of electronic records to a current point in time, the timeline configured to enable selection of a first time period within the range; dynamically displaying on the GUI, an actionable central node representing either the party-of-interest or the party and a set of one or more actionable peripheral nodes at the first time period, wherein, when the actionable central node is dynamically displayed as representing the party-of-interest, the set of one or more actionable peripheral nodes is dynamically displayed as representing a set of one or more parties, and wherein a size of each actionable peripheral node in the set of one or more actionable peripheral nodes represents a frequency of electronic access by the party-of-interest of an electronic record associated with a represented party in the set of one or more parties, and wherein, when the actionable central node is dynamically displayed as representing the party, the set of one or more actionable peripheral nodes is dynamically displayed as representing a set of one or more parties-of-interest, and wherein the size of each actionable peripheral node in the set of one or more actionable peripheral nodes represents a frequency of electronic access of the electronic record associated with the party by the party-of-interest represented by the each actionable peripheral node in the set of actionable peripheral nodes.
“2. The media of claim 1, wherein the timeline comprises a first coarseness.
“3. The media of claim 1, wherein the timeline further comprises a first bi-directional slider.
“4. The media of claim 1, further comprising: dynamically displaying on the GUI, an additional timeline having a second range representing the first time period selected with the first bi-directional slider on the timeline, the additional timeline comprising a second coarseness finer than the first coarseness of the first timeline and a second bi-directional slider configured to enable selection of a second time period within the second range, the second time period represented by a third range.
“5. The media of claim 1, further comprising: a set of one or more actionable peripheral nodes at the first time period and the second time period selected with the first bi-directional slider and the second bi-directional slider, respectively.
“6. The media of claim 1, wherein a smaller size of an actionable peripheral node in the set of one or more actionable peripheral nodes is associated with a lesser frequency of electronic access of the electronic record associated with the represented party or party-of-interest.
“7. The media of claim 1, wherein a larger size of an actionable peripheral node in the set of one or more actionable peripheral nodes is associated with a greater frequency of electronic access of the electronic record associated with the represented party or party-of-interest.
“8. The media of claim 1, wherein interaction with the actionable central node or an actionable peripheral node in the set of one or more actionable peripheral nodes initiates presentation of user-identifying information for the represented party or party-of-interest.
“9. The media of claim 1, further comprising one or more filters, each filter having a different criteria, selection of which restricts the set of one or more parties or the set of one or more parties-of-interest represented by the set of one or more actionable peripheral nodes.
“10. One or more non-transitory computer-storage media having computer-executable instructions embodied thereon that, when executed by a computing device, cause the computing device to perform a method for dynamically displaying an audit log history related to a clinician on a graphical user interface (GUI) and for facilitating an efficient and intuitive exploration of information related to the audit log history, the method comprising: receiving a first request for a first graphical representation of audit events related to the audit log history and a set of electronic medical records (EMRs) accessed by the clinician; in response to receiving the first request, rendering the first graphical representation on the GUI by utilizing data associated with the audit log history and the set of EMRs; dynamically displaying on the GUI, a first timeline having a first range representing a first timeframe corresponding to a creation of the set of EMRs to a current point in time, the first timeline configured to enable selection of a first time period within the first range; dynamically displaying on the GUI, an actionable central node representing the clinician and a set of one or more actionable peripheral nodes representing a set of patients associated with the set of EMRs; receiving a selection of the first time period and the second time period; in response to receiving the selection of the first time period and the second time period, dynamically displaying the set of one or more actionable peripheral nodes, wherein each actionable peripheral node represents a patient in the set of patients associated with an EMR in the set of EMRs accessed by the clinician during the selected first time period; receiving a selection of a first actionable peripheral node from the set of one or more actionable peripheral nodes, wherein the first actionable peripheral node represents the patient; and in response to receiving the selection of the first actionable peripheral node, displaying the actionable central node to represent the patient.
“11. The media of claim 10, wherein the first timeline comprises a first coarseness and a first bi-directional slider.
“12. The media of claim 10, further comprising dynamically displaying on the GUI, a second timeline having a second range representing the first time period selected with the first bi-directional slider on the first timeline, the second timeline comprising a second coarseness finer than the first coarseness of the first timeline, a second bi-directional slider configured to enable selection of a second time period within the second range, and a third range representing the second time period.
“13. The media of claim 10, wherein a size associated with one or more actionable peripheral nodes indicates a frequency of access by the clinician of the EMR in the set of EMRs.
“14. The media of claim 10, wherein the set of one or more actionable peripheral nodes is automatically updated in response to receiving the selection of the first time period and the second time period.
“15. The media of claim 10, wherein each actionable peripheral node in the set of one or more actionable peripheral nodes is connected to the actionable central node by an arrow, each arrow pointing in a direction of access of the each actionable peripheral node’s respective EMR.
“16. The media of claim 10, further comprising one or more filters, each filter having a different criteria, wherein selection of the each filter restricts the set of one or more actionable peripheral nodes to a subset of the set of one or more actionable peripheral nodes that meet the criteria of the each selected filter.
“17. The media of claim 16, wherein the criteria of the one or more filters comprises at least one of a gender, age, medication, or EMR access details.”
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