Patent Application Titled “Multimodal Input Device And System For Wireless Record Keeping In A Multi-User Environment” Published Online (USPTO 20200310562)

2020 OCT 19 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- According to news reporting originating from Washington, D.C., by NewsRx journalists, a patent application by the inventors Zipp, Christopher P. (Morris Plains, NJ); Bordonaro, Benjamin A. (Parsippany, NJ), filed on August 23, 2019, was made available online on October 1, 2020.

The assignee for this patent application is Atlantic Health System Inc. (Morristown, New Jersey, United States).

Reporters obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors: “Electronic medical record (EMR) systems provide an electronic record of health-related information on an individual patient that can be shared among clinicians within a health care organization. Such electronic records are created, gathered, and managed through systems of data devices, such as desktop computers, tablets, and personal digital assistants, and are typically stored on systems of servers, whether on site or in remote locations (e.g., the ‘cloud’). EMR systems have the potential to facilitate workflow and improve the quality of patient care and safety, and doctor-patient interactions.

“Despite technical developments that have taken place since the early 2010’s, the existing clinical workflow of the EMR system still has numerous inefficiencies which take time and attention away from the practice of care. Typically, a clinician will interact with many patients or other health care consumers over the course of a workday, in many patient rooms, using many disparate workstations, input devices, and consulting rooms, or at a central location remote from the patient’s location. In such arrangements, the clinician must position and orient him or herself at the device, manually log in at a keyboard, enter the patient’s identifying information at a keyboard, and update the patient’s records using a keyboard and/or mouse. In situations where the workstation is remote from the patient’s room, some entry errors may be missed or information overlooked during the lag between interacting with the patient and reaching the workstation. In such cases, data might be entered by someone other than the clinician, thus increasing the possibility of lost or incorrectly entered data. In situations where the work station is in a fixed location in a patient’s room or consulting room, the clinician may be distracted by moving back and forth between the patient and the workstation, or may interact with the patient from a seat at the workstation.

“Some facilities mitigate the inefficiencies described above by using touch screens, or by using portable devices, such as laptop computers or tablets, which the clinician carries from room to room. Records may be stored on the device for download at a later time, or transmitted wirelessly to central servers at the time that it is collected. Even in such systems, it is still necessary for the clinician to interact with devices through the use of a mouse, keyboard or touch screen. It may often be necessary for the clinician to leave the portable device on a counter or table during the interaction, resulting in the same restrictions on the clinician’s movement that result from using fixed workstations. Further, portable devices may be lost or stolen, putting the security of patient data at risk.”

In addition to obtaining background information on this patent application, NewsRx editors also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent application: “In a first aspect, the present invention provides a self-contained multimodal data input device for remotely entering data into a record-keeping system. Features of the input device include: wireless transmission and receipt of data; a pen-like profile; controls for emulating the left and right-click functions of a computer mouse; controls for emulating at least one command key of a standard keyboard; means for determining the orientation and movement of the input device in space for translation to X-Y coordinates for display on a monitor; a self-contained power supply; and controls for connecting and interrupting electrical connections between the power supply and electronic circuits in the input device.

“In some embodiments, the input device further has one or more of the following features: means for programming the functions of the input device; means for selecting and implementing pre-programmed commands; means for uploading and storage of data from ancillary devices and means for downloading such data to other devices; means for capturing and digitally encoding speech; means for capturing and digitally encoding images; and means for encoding a biometric characteristic of a person operating the input device.

“In a second aspect, the present invention provides a system for connecting and disconnecting the input device and the gateway device according to the proximity of the input device to the gateway device. In an embodiment, the gateway device and input device maintain a communications channel between themselves according to a protocol for preventing other devices from hijacking of the channel. In an embodiment, each input device is capable of interacting with any gateway device in the system in a many-to-many relationship. In an embodiment, the protocol includes a step of pairing the input device with a gateway device until the input device is affirmatively disconnected from the gateway device.

“In a third aspect, the present invention provides a system for authenticating the input device and/or the user of the input device to the EMR system. In one embodiment, the input device is authenticated by the gateway. In another embodiment, both the input device and the user are identified and verified (e.g., two-factor authentication). In an embodiment, the user is identified by a biometric parameter, such as a fingerprint image, a vocal pattern; or characteristics of a manual signature or visual image.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A multimodal data input device, comprising: a housing having a size and shape comparable to a writing pen; mouse-click means for emulating functions of a computer mouse, the mouse-click means including first and second buttons accessible from outside the housing and first electronic circuits within the housing, the first electronic circuits controlled by the first and second buttons to emulate the left-click and right-click functions of the computer mouse including generation of electronic digital mouse-click signals unique to the left-click and right-click functions; command-key means for initiating a sequence of events according to a program stored in the input device, the command-key means including a third button accessible from outside the housing and second electronic circuits controlled by the third button to execute the program associated with the command key including generation of electronic digital command signals; position-detection means for determining the orientation and motion of the input device, the position-detection means including one or more sensing devices within the housing for determining the orientation and free movement of the input device within free three-dimensional space, the position-detection means further including third electronic circuits for encoding data from the one or more sensing devices into an electronic digital position signals that can be transformed into X-Y coordinates by a remote device; fourth electronic circuits for wirelessly transmitting the mouse-click signals, the command signals, the positions signals, and for receiving digital signals from remote devices; fifth electronic circuits for processing digital electronic signals from remote devices; a visual indicator visible from outside of housing for indicating an operating state of the input device; a self-contained power source within the housing; and a power on/power off button for making and breaking an electrical connection between the self-contained power source and the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth electronic circuits and the visible signal.

“2. The multimodal input device of claim 1, wherein the command-key means is arranged to emulate the commands of a command key of a standard computer keyboard.

“3. The multimodal input device of claim 1, further including digital data capture means for capturing digital data transmitted by other devices, digital data storage means for storing the captured digital data within the multimodal input device, and digital data transmission means for transmitting the stored captured digital data.

“4. The multimodal input device of claim 1, further including analog data capture means for capturing data other than digital data from the environment outside of the multimodal input device, digital data extraction means for extracting digital data from the captured analog data, digital data storage means for storing the extracted digital data, and digital data transmission means for transmitting the stored extracted data.

“5. The multimodal input device of claim 1, further including speech-capturing means for digitally capturing speech and encoding the speech into a digital audio file stored in digital data storage means within the multimodal input device, the speech-capturing means including a microphone accessible at the housing.

“6. The multimodal input device of claim 5, wherein the speech-capturing means encodes the speech into an audio file that is in a format for conversion at a remote device to text displayed at a screen.

“7. The multimodal input device of claim 5, further including speech-playback means for reconstructing the speech from the audio file and for converting said speech to a sound that is audible in the environment outside of the multimodal input device.

“8. The multimodal input device of claim 1, further including image-capturing means for digitally capturing an image and encoding the image into a digital image file stored in digital data storage means within the multimodal input device, the image-capturing means including a camera accessible at the housing.

“9. The multimodal input device of claim 8, wherein the image-capturing means includes electronic circuitry for extracting facial-recognition data from the digital image file and encoding the facial-recognition data in a facial-recognition data file stored in digital data storage means.

“10. The multimodal input device of claim 1, further including means for capturing position, orientation, velocity, and time data from the position-detection means and encoding the speech into a digital position-orientation-and-velocity data file stored in digital data storage means within the multimodal input device.

“11. The multimodal input device of claim 10, further including means for extracting digital signature-comparison data from the position-orientation-and-velocity data file for comparison with signature-comparison data extracted from a reference signature and storing the position-orientation-and-velocity data file in digital storage means within the multimodal input device.

“12. The multimodal input device of claim 11, wherein the position-detection means includes one or more of an accelerometer, gyroscope, and compass, and a clock.

“13. The multimodal input device of claim 11, wherein the position-detection means includes an inertial measurement unit that operates along nine degrees of freedom and a clock.

“14. The multimodal input device of claim 10, wherein the multimodal input device includes a stylus at the distal end of the multimodal input device and a pressure sensor for measuring pressure exerted on the stylus and a clock, and pressure-data collection means for converting signals from the stylus pressure sensor to digital pressure data and encoding the digital pressure data and time data from the clock into the digital position-orientation-and-velocity data file.

“15. A two-factor user authentication protocol for a system including a multimodal input device and a remote computer, wherein the multimodal input device includes a unique digital stored identification code and the computer has access to a list of reference identification codes and a database of reference biometric data files, the protocol including the steps of: capturing a biometric sample from the user, extracting digital biometric data from the biometric sample, and storing the digital biometric data as a user-biometric-data file within the multimodal input device; transmitting the unique identification code from the multimodal input device to the remote computer, thereby initiating a first set of predefined actions whereby the remote computer compares the transmitted identification codes to the reference identification codes; and if the transmitted identification code matches any reference identification code in the list, then initiating a second set of predefined actions, else initiating a third set of predefined actions whereby the remote computer denies further access by the multimodal input device; wherein the second set of predefined actions includes the steps of transmitting the user-biometric-data file to the remote computer, thereby initiating a fourth set of predefined actions whereby the computer compares the transmitted user-biometric data file to biometric data files in the database; and if the contents of the transmitted user-biometric-data file match the contents of a user-biometric-data file in the database, then allowing the multimodal input device to have continued access to the remote computer, else initiating a fourth set of predefined actions whereby the remote computer denies further access by the multimodal input device

“16. A method for maintaining wireless communication links between multiple multimodal input devices and multiple remote computers, each of which is configures to act as a device for receiving wireless signals and a device for transmitting wireless signals, wherein each multiple multimodal input device and each remote computer has its respective digital data capture means for capturing digital data transmitted wirelessly by other devices, respective digital data storage means for storing the captured digital data within the multimodal input device or remote computer, respective digital data transmission means for wirelessly transmitting stored captured digital data, and respective means for detecting wireless signals and determining the distance between the receiving device and the transmitting device, the method including the steps of: is the remote computers sending repeated signals requesting responses from multimodal input devices until a first multimodal input device responds with a signal acknowledging the request from a first remote computer; upon receiving the response from the first multimodal input device, the first remote computer initiates a first series of predetermined actions to estimate the distance between the first remote computer and the first multimodal device; and if the estimated distance is less than a first threshold distance, the first remote computer establishes and maintains a communication link with the first multimodal input device then continues to estimate the distance between the first remote computer and the first multimodal input device, and breaks the communication link if one or more of the following conditions occurs: the distance between the first remote computer and the first multimodal device is greater than the first threshold distance, the first remote computer no longer receives a response from the first multimodal device, the remote computer receives a command to break the communication link, and the remote computer or multimodal input device is deactivated.

“17. The method of claim 16, wherein if the estimated distance is less than a second threshold distance which is less than the first threshold distance and the first remote computer receives a request to pair with the first multimodal input device, then the pairing is maintained until one of the following conditions occurs, the first remote computer receives a command to break the communication link, the remote computer is deactivated, and the first remote computer receives an acknowledgement from a second multimodal input device while the estimated distance between the remote computer and the first multimodal communication device is greater than the first threshold distance.

“18. The method of claim 16, wherein transmission of stored data from the first remote computer is transmitted across the communication link is initiated when one of the following events occurs: the remote computer receives a command from the first multimodal input device to transmit data, the estimated distance between the first remote computer and the first multimodal device is less than a second threshold distance which is less than the first threshold distance, and the multimodal input device physically contacts the remote computer.”

For more information, see this patent application: Zipp, Christopher P.; Bordonaro, Benjamin A. Multimodal Input Device And System For Wireless Record Keeping In A Multi-User Environment. Filed August 23, 2019 and posted October 1, 2020. Patent URL: http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220200310562%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20200310562&RS=DN/20200310562

(Our reports deliver fact-based news of research and discoveries from around the world.)