Patent Application Titled “Patient And Service Provider Remote Interaction System, Method And Apparatus” Published Online (USPTO 20220076851): Patent Application

2022 MAR 29 (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 inventor Kamangar, Nazar (Walnut Creek, CA, US), filed on October 29, 2020, was made available online on March 10, 2022.

No assignee for this patent application has been made.

Reporters obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors: “Traditional approaches for providing dental care services may often provide patients with quality in-person care. However, the convenience and efficiency of service models may be in various ways unsatisfactory for all parties involved, including the services provider, the patient, and where applicable, third party payers (e.g. insurers). For example, patient options to interact with dental service providers are often cumbersome, time-consuming and expensive. In-office appointments may involve scheduling limitations, travel, in-office waiting and substantial expense, coupled for some patients with heightened concerns about potential exposure to infectious disease. Telephonic consultations may be difficult to schedule, with limited ability to communicate issues of concern, cost uncertainty and limited documentation of results. As a result of such issues, individuals often delay in seeking dental care, leading to greater pain and discomfort, as well as more costly and extensive remedial treatments later.

“In other circumstances, patients may escalate service demands inappropriately, incurring high costs by seeking emergency treatment from a dentist or even hospital emergency room, when such treatment may not be necessary or could have been avoided by earlier intervention. Patients may have limited ability to identify an appropriate service provider for any given issue, leading to inefficient use of resources.

“Meanwhile, information related to oral care and related services is often highly siloed and inefficiently utilized. Patients may have limited visibility into their insurance benefit coverage available for any given services. Patients often have little access to their own records; record requests may be slow, time consuming, and incur substantial costs (whether charged through to the requester or imposed as an administrative burden on the record holder). Patients may have little knowledge or understanding of dental products and services that may be relevant to them. In other situations, patients may be required to provide information multiple times to various service providers and insurers. Limited information availability to insurers may delay payments, cause erroneous coverage determinations, and impose significant burdens on care providers in submitting claims and responding to information requests.

“These and other challenges may provide many opportunities for improvement.”

In addition to obtaining background information on this patent application, NewsRx editors also obtained the inventor’s summary information for this patent application: “In accordance with some of the aspects described herein, a platform enables improved interactions between various entities involved in a service provider-client relationship, such as a dental office and a patient, and optionally further with a third party payer such as an insurer or employer.

“For example, in accordance with one aspect, a network-connected server facilitates interaction communications between one or more dental service providers and one or more patients, each using a network-connected electronic device, such as (without limitation) a personal computer, smartphone, other mobile communications device, tablet computer, or voice interactive device. A request for remote consultation may be received from a patient electronic device (“PED”). The request may include one or more items of information descriptive of the desired consultation, whether submitted by a patient when initially requesting a consultation or submitted thereafter in response to presenting the patient with questions concerning, e.g., their current condition. The platform them determines the suitability of the request for remote consultation based at least in part upon information provided by the PED, in order to either initiate a service request for a service provider remote session, or direct the patient to seek an alternative service provider (such as an emergency room or other emergency services provider). Information that may be utilized to determine suitability for remote service may include, for example, information provided by a patient to a SPCI server in response to queries for information. Such information may include video or image content (e.g. images captured by a patient’s smartphone running a SPCI-app), which video or image content may be analyzed automatically to identify the presence of one or more predetermined conditions that may be factored into a service request suitability determination, such as the presence of blood or the absence of a tooth (particularly wherein the user has prior records accessible to the server that indicate a change in condition, such as the prior presence of the tooth).

“If a service request for a service provider remote session is initiated, the patient’s request may be placed in queue. In some embodiments, separate queues may be maintained for critical and non-critical services. The patient’s service request may be prioritized relative to other service requests based upon a number of prioritization factors, including e.g. evaluation of patient electronic medical records, information provided by the patient regarding the service request, information procured from external systems such as a patient’s brushing and other oral hygiene practices, duration of time since submission of the service request, and information available in a patient profile.

“Digital content (such as video content, audio content, articles, short textual content, image-based content, or the like) may be presented to users while waiting in queue for remote service, and may be made available to a user on demand via a SPCI-app. Content made available to a patient for playback may include patient educational content, advertising, or other content. Content may be personalized, or selected for presentation from amongst a number of different content items, based on a variety of factors, including information concerning the patient’s current service request, past service requests, user profile information, and the like.

“Various components may be implemented using machine teaming to, e.g., assist with automatic evaluation of request suitability for remote consultation, and/or to assist with remote service request prioritization (such as for purposes of determining queue priority), and/or for matching of patient consultation requests with available service providers. Feedback may be solicited from service providers and utilized to train such machine learning based algorithms and classifiers.

“These and other aspects are described in detail below and in the accompanying drawings.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A method for a network-connected server to facilitate interactive communications between one or more dental service providers and one or more patients, the dental service provider using a network-connected service provide electronic device (SPED) and each patient using a network-connected patient electronic device (PED), the method comprising: receiving a request for a remote consultation from a PED utilized by a patient, the request comprising one or more items of information descriptive of the consultation; and determining suitability of the request for remote consultation based at least in part upon information provided by the PED in said request, in order to either (a) initiate a service request for a service provider remote session; or (b) direct the patient to seek an alternative service provider.

“2. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of receiving a request for a remote consultation from a PED comprises: querying the patient using the PED, for information concerning the remote consultation; and transmitting information responsive to the step of querying the patient, to the server; wherein the step of determining suitability of the request for remote consultation is further performed based at least in part upon information received in response to the step of querying the patient.

“3. The method of claim 2, wherein the step of querying the patient comprises querying whether the patient has a condition resulting from trauma.

“4. The method of claim 2, further comprising: queueing the service request for connection with a service provider, wherein the service request is prioritized relative to other service requests based at least in part upon information received by the server in connection with the request for remote consultation.

“5. The method of claim 1, in which the step of determining suitability of the request for remote consultation comprises: transmitting a notification to the PED directing the patient to visit an emergency medical services provider.

“6. The method of claim 2, in which the step of determining suitability of the request for remote consultation comprises applying a machine learning component having inputs comprising the one or more items of information and/or the information responsive to the step of querying the patient, and having feedback comprising service provider evaluation of suitability following completion of a remote consultation session.

“7. The method of claim 2, in which the step of querying the patient using the PED comprises requesting upload by the patient of a media content captured by the PED.

“8. The method of claim 7, in which the step of determining suitability of the request for remote consultation comprises analyzing said media content by applying an image recognition component for automated identification of one or more predetermined conditions.

“9. The method of claim 8, in which the one or more predetermined conditions comprise one or more of: presence of blood, and absence of a tooth.

“10. The method of claim 4, in which the step of querying the patient using the PED comprises requesting upload by the patient of a media content captured by the PED; and wherein the step of queueing the service request comprises prioritizing the service request relative to other service requests based at least in part upon said media content.

“11. The method of claim 10, wherein prioritizing the service request relative to other service requests is further based at least in part upon a duration of time since submission of the service request.

“12. The method of claim 1, in which the step of determining suitability of the request for remote consultation further comprises evaluating records associated with the patient stored in a service provider electronic medical records (EMR) system.

“13. The method of claim 1, in which the step of determining suitability of the request for remote consultation further comprises evaluating records associated with the patient stored in an insurer electronic medical records (EMR) system.

“14. The method of claim 1, in which the step of determining suitability of the request for remote consultation further comprises evaluating records associated with the patient stored by the server in a patient profile.

“15. The method of claim 2, in which the step of querying the patient using the PED, for information concerning the remote consultation, comprises applying a voice recognition component to procure patient information.

“16. The method of claim 1, in which the step of receiving a request for a remote consultation comprises storing at least a subset of the one or more items of information descriptive of the consultation within a distributed ledger.

“17. The method of claim 1, further comprising: prioritizing the service request for a service provider remote session based upon one or more prioritization factors, said prioritization factors comprising one or more of said items of information descriptive of the consultation.

“18. The method of claim 17, in which said prioritization factors further comprise historical consultation information stored by or accessible to said server.

“19. The method of claim 17, in which said prioritization factors further comprise a duration of time since said step of receiving a request for a remote consultation.

“20. The method of claim 1, further comprising: assigning the service request to a subset of service providers based at least in part upon one or more of said items of information descriptive of the consultation.

“21. The method of claim 20, wherein the subset of service providers is selected based at least in part upon service providers specialization.

“22. The method of claim 20, wherein the subset of service providers is selected based at least in part upon indicia of availability received from said service providers.

“23. The method of claim 20, wherein the subset of service providers is selected based at least in part upon records of prior interaction between the patient and one or more of said service providers.

“24. The method of claim 1, further comprising initiating one or more of the following between the server and the PED: a network-based videoconferencing session, secure text messaging, and telephonic voice communication.

“25. The method of claim 1, further comprising: queueing the service request for initiation of a remote consultation with a service provider; and during a period in which the service request is queued, initiating display of media content on the PED, the media content selected from amongst a plurality of media content options based on one or more personalization factors.

“26. The method of claim 25, in which the one or more personalization factors comprise one or more of said items of information descriptive of the consultation.

“27. The method of claim 26, wherein said media content comprises patient education information having content associated with the consultation.

“28. The method of claim 25, in which the one or more personalization factors comprise profile information associated with the patient stored by the server.

“29. The method of claim 25, in which the one or more personalization factors comprise historical requests for consultation submitted by the patient.

“30. The method of claim 25, in which the media content comprises an advertisement.

“31. The method of claim 1, in which the step of determining suitability of the request for remote consultation comprises directing the patient to seek an alternative service provider, the method further comprising: displaying contact information for one or more service providers to whom the patient is referred.

“32. The method of claim 31, further comprising: automatically transmitting an appointment request to said one or more service providers to whom the patient is referred.

“33. A remote interactive service system that enables patients to remotely request service from a service provider, including: a plurality of patient electronic devices (PED), each PED including an interface capable of communicating one of wired and wirelessly; a plurality of service provider electronic devices (SPED), each SPED including an interface capable of communicating one of wired and wirelessly; a remote interactive service database maintaining transactions conducted in the system; a remote, network-connected service provider client interactive system (SPCI), including a server for communicating with the plurality of PED and the plurality of SPED; and the SPCI via the server: enables one of a plurality of clients to remotely request service via one of the plurality of PED, each patient of the plurality of patients having a unique identifier in the system; reviews past service requests of the one of a plurality of patients via their unique identifier stored in the remote interactive service database; triages the one of a plurality of patients’ service request by sending and receiving the response for at least one related service question from the one of a plurality of patients via one of the plurality of PED; and based on the received response, one of: (a) generates a related service request to one of a plurality of service providers via one of the plurality of the SPED, and (b) directs the one of a plurality of patients to seek service via a different service provider.

“34. The remote interactive service system of claim 33, wherein remote interactive service database is maintained independent of the SPCI.

“35. The remote interactive service system of claim 34, wherein remote interactive service database is stored in a distributed ledger.”

There are additional claims. Please visit full patent to read further.

For more information, see this patent application: Kamangar, Nazar. Patient And Service Provider Remote Interaction System, Method And Apparatus. Filed October 29, 2020 and posted March 10, 2022. Patent URL: https://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=%2220220076851%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20220076851&RS=DN/20220076851

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