Patent Application Titled “Method for providing wearable device-collected physiological information to relevant service providers” Published Online (USPTO 20220044805): Patent Application
2022 FEB 28 (NewsRx) -- By a
No assignee for this patent application has been made.
Reporters obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors: “Wearable technology devices are relatively recent phenomenon that can be quite useful in, among other things, enabling individuals to monitor aspects of their personal health and physical fitness in real time. As wearable technology advances, the number and reliability of the multitude of health metrics that such technology can capture is ever increasing. Therefore, to the extent that wearable device users alter their behaviors in reaction to the physiological feedback they receive from the devices, wearable technology can positively impact health and wellness in ways that traditional physician consultations do not lend themselves to doing. That notion is primarily attributable to the fact that wearable devices can provide health information both immediately and continuously-enabling their users (and their physicians) to contextualize the information captured at any given moment, rather than having to extrapolate from and speculate based on isolated in time snapshots of health data captured from traditional medical examinations. It may also be partly due to some wearable devices being able to capture health data and detect impending physiological events of the type that are simply unlikely to be observed during or projected by a type of physician examination that is not intended to be focused on a specific area(s) of health.
“Accordingly, wearable devices can contribute towards longer, healthier lives-an obvious benefit from the perspective of their end users. And from the perspective of insurers and other service providers whose business models involve assessing the health and wellness of those same end users, wearable devices can provide them with information of the types and breadth that can appreciably improve the quality of their business decision-making.
“As with any type of technology, wearable devices adapted to capture health-related data are not uniform in their capabilities. Today, there are many brands, like FITBIT,
“By contrast, entities that are engaged in the business of health risk assessment, such as companies providing health, disability, and life insurance policies, might have a use for more and different health information than many of their consumers are consciously interested in discovering, and they certainly have incentive to analyze a wider breadth of information-wider with respect to both the types of and time points at which physiological data metrics are captured-than they, historically, have had access to.
“Accordingly, the present inventor recognizes that much of the universe of physiological information that can be captured by modern wearable devices could be not only interesting to wearable end users, but also commercially beneficial to entities whose business it is to apply actuarial science and make data-driven determinations as to consumer eligibility and pricing of various insurance and other consumer products. Health insurance and life insurance providers, for example, are almost certainly better served by performing their requisite risk analyses using inherently unbiased data of the type captured by reliable wearable devices and transmitted to them electronically, than they are by performing those analyses using what may be less reliable and, likely, less comprehensive information related to them by persons-be those persons prospective insurance consumers, themselves, or even their well-trained physicians and therapists.
“So, the present inventor recognizes a need for a process in which a trusted hub, or “clearinghouse,” entity receives physiological information about consumers that was collected by recognized wearable technology devices, authenticates the information, transforms the information in some fashion (in some instances), and then provides that raw or transformed information to service providers (with the consumers’ consent) who are subscribers to the information sharing process and for whom such information may be useful in determining things like eligibility for and/or pricing of their products to those specific consumers. In so doing, the present inventor recognizes the need to ensure that the consumer health information it receives from wearable devices and shares with these service providers be authenticated as the physiological data of the specific consumer that it has associated with a specific wearable device (as opposed to information collected from another individual who may happen to wear that same device at a given moment).
“Finally, the present inventor recognizes a further need for such a data clearinghouse service to provide and broker financial incentives to the stakeholders associated with that process (i.e., the wearable device-using consumer who is an existing or potential consumer of the subscribing service provider(s), the wearable device maker, and the subscribing service provider) in a manner that encourages stakeholder participation in the process and encourages that a greater breadth and sophistication of physiological data be collected and shared. The method of the present invention substantially fulfills these needs.”
In addition to obtaining background information on this patent application, NewsRx editors also obtained the inventor’s summary information for this patent application: “The present invention generally relates to the sharing of wearable device-captured physiological data via at least one telecommunications network, and it is specifically directed to a subscription-based method for: (1) collecting such data from identified users of such devices that consent to its sharing; (2) authenticating that the collected data is that of the identified user; (3) transforming such collected and authenticated data in a way that it becomes more useful to certain types of service providers; and (4) sharing that transformed data with such service providers (e.g., insurance providers) that pay for access to the transformed data-presumably, to aid them in determining whether a consumer is eligible to receive their products and in determining identified consumer-specific pricing for such products.
“In a preferred embodiment, the present method is a data clearinghouse that passes physiological information between wearable technology devices and certain service providers. It is anticipated that these services providers will be insurance providers (e.g., health insurers and life insurers), but they may be other businesses who deem consumer physiological information useful to their business models. It is also anticipated that consumers would indicate their consent (either directly to the clearinghouse, through a service provider application, or by way of entering into user agreements with makers of their wearable devices) to the clearinghouse’s data collection and sharing activities and, possibly, to indicate which specific service providers the clearinghouse is permitted to share [specific items of] their physiological information with. Furthermore, it is anticipated that the clearinghouse’s health information collection and sharing activities-and the corresponding consumer consents thereto-may vary from consumer to consumer and from service provider to service provider. For example, in one instance, the clearinghouse may be authorized to capture all of the health data metrics that are ever collected by a particular wearable device during a continuous timeframe (e.g., all metrics collected from
“In fact, it is in this regard that the present method promises to deliver to service providers more reliable, more relevant, and more dispositive consumer health and wellness information upon which they can base their service offerings and corresponding pricing to their consumers. By contrast, the health information that they have had to rely upon, heretofore, was limited, in both scope and volume, to only that which could be collected while a consumer was being observed by (and, typically, in the physical presence of) a physician or therapist. The present method, on the other hand, can produce and utilized information that is collected continuously over an indefinite timespan and is not subject to any subjective human characterization or manipulation, nor any selective non-disclosure that could distort what a body of collected health information might, otherwise, indicate to a service provider.
“In a preferred embodiment of the present method, the clearinghouse would authenticate (or be able to verify that the wearing device, itself, authenticated) that the physiological data transmitted to it from a wearable device, in fact, was collected from the intended user that has previously authorized the clearinghouse to share his or her information. It is understood in the art of wearable device technology that such authentication can be accomplished by any of various biometric recognition mechanisms (e.g., analyzing bodily fluids, voice recognition, vein mapping, etc.)
“In a preferred embodiment of the present method, the clearinghouse would transform the data received from consumers in some manner. Now, such a “transformation” could concern merely the ways in which collected data metrics are compiled and formatted for sharing, or it could involve algorithmically producing various outputs using certain received data metrics as inputs. In any case, the transformed data is to be provided to service providers that pay a [recurring] fee for access to such transformed information.
“Finally, in a preferred embodiment, the wearable device users, the wearable device makers, and the service providers are all incentivized to participate in the process. For example, the user may be incentivized in the form of a lower priced offer for an insurance product than he would otherwise receive if he did not participate in the process. The device maker may be incentivized to capture and transmit more or certain types of physiological metrics in the form of payment from the clearinghouse (presumably, a share of the subscription fees collected by the clearinghouse from service providers). The service providers, as previously mentioned, are incentivized to participate by way of recognizing that they can make more prudent financial decisions on consumer eligibility and pricing using the higher quality transformed data that originates from wearable technology, rather than relying on statements from consumers or even their attending physicians.”
The claims supplied by the inventors are:
“1. A method for providing wearable device users’ physiological information, to a service provider, using a computing device and telecommunications network(s), the method comprising: receiving physiological information from a wearable device via a telecommunications network; authenticating that that received physiological information was collected from a wearable device user that has indicated consent to share its physiological information with the service provider; providing the authenticated physiological information to the service provider via a telecommunications network.
“2. The method of claim 1, wherein authenticating comprises comparing (a) previously collected biometric information associated with said user with (b) biometric information later collected by said wearable device.
“3. The method of claim 1, wherein said user consents to share, with said service provider, all physiological information collected by said wearable device.
“4. The method of claim 1, wherein said user consents to share, with said service provider, only physiological information that is collected, by said wearable device, during a predetermined time period(s).
“5. The method of claim 1, further comprising receiving compensation, from said service provider, for sharing physiological information therewith.
“6. The method of claim 1, further comprising conferring a benefit, to the maker of said wearable device, in response to receiving a certain quantity or type of authenticated physiological information from said wearable device.
“7. The method of claim 1, further comprising indicating a benefit, to said user, in response to receiving a certain quantity or type of authenticated physiological information from said wearable device.
“8. The method of claim 7, wherein said indicated benefit is defined by at least one of: (a) a discounted cost of a service provided by said service provider; and (b) eligibility for receiving a product provided by said service provider.
“9. A method for providing wearable device-collected physiological information, to a service provider, using a computing device and a telecommunications network(s), the method comprising: receiving compensation, from said service provider, for sharing physiological information therewith; receiving, from a wearable device via a telecommunications network, physiological information collected from a wearable device user which has indicated consent to share its physiological information with the service provider; generating, at the computing device, a transformation of the received physiological information, wherein the transformed information comprises or derives from the received physiological information; providing the transformed information to the service provider via a telecommunications network.
“10. The method of claim 9, further comprising conferring a benefit, to the maker of said wearable device, in response to receiving a certain quantity or type of physiological information from said wearable device.
“11. The method of claim 9, further comprising indicating a benefit to said user in response to receiving a certain quantity or type of physiological information from said wearable device.
“12. The method of claim 11, wherein said indicated benefit is defined by at least one of: (a) a discounted cost of a service provided by said service provider; and (b) eligibility for receiving a product provided by said service provider.”
For more information, see this patent application: Pickell, Stephen. Method for providing wearable device-collected physiological information to relevant service providers. Filed
(Our reports deliver fact-based news of research and discoveries from around the world.)
Research from Tabriz University of Medical Sciences Has Provided New Study Findings on Health and Medicine (Individual and institutional capacity-building for evidence-informed health policy-making in Iran: a mix of local and global evidence): Health and Medicine
Researchers from Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) Report Details of New Studies and Findings in the Area of Preventive Medicine (Health Savings Plans and Disparities In Access To Care By Race and Ethnicity): Health and Medicine – Preventive Medicine
Advisor News
Annuity News
Health/Employee Benefits News
Life Insurance News