Patent Application Titled “Security For Medical Risk Assessment System” Published Online (USPTO 20190087912)

2019 APR 10 (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 Dellaripa, David F. (Tolland, CT); Heilman, Aubrey T. (Hartford, CT); Robbins, Gary (Cave Creek, AZ), filed on November 21, 2018, was made available online on March 21, 2019.

The assignee for this patent application is Hartford Fire Insurance Company (Hartford, Connecticut, United States).

Reporters obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors: “An underwriter may evaluate risks associated with a potential insurance policy. For example, the underwriter might consider various medical risk factors associated with an applicant’s potential life insurance policy. There are, however, a substantial number of factors that may need to be considered by the underwriter. In some cases, a printed manual is provided to help underwriters evaluate medical risk factors. In this way, underwriters can look up various medical conditions to learn about risks associated with those conditions. Such an approach, can be time consuming that the underwriter may need to manually copy risk information and/or manually calculate certain values (e.g., an applicant’s average blood pressure) before he or she can determine an overall amount of risk associated with the potential insurance policy. Moreover, manually creating a letter to notify an applicant of an underwriting decision (e.g., informing the applicant that his or her application has been denied). Note that transmitting this type of information over a network, such as by transmitting the information to a web site via the Internet, may not provide a level of security and privacy that is appropriate for an applicant’s medical information.

“It would therefore be desirable to provide systems and methods to facilitate medical risk underwriting decisions for a potential insurance policy in an automated, efficient, and accurate manner.”

In addition to obtaining background information on this patent application, NewsRx editors also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent application: “According to some embodiments, systems, methods, apparatus, computer program code and means may facilitate medical risk underwriting decisions for an insurance policy. In some embodiments, systems, methods, apparatus, computer program code and means may display information from a medical risk factor computer storage unit or database. Information associated with an insurance policy, having an insurance policy identifier, may then be received from an underwriter along with a plurality of medical risk factor values for the insurance policy. The plurality of medical risk factor values may be stored into an insurance policy storage unit in association with the insurance policy identifier. An overall risk level associated with the insurance policy may be automatically calculated based on the plurality of medical risk factor values, and a file may be locally saved associating the overall risk level with the insurance policy identifier and/or plurality of medical risk factor values.

“A technical effect of some embodiments of the invention is an improved and computerized method to facilitate medical risk underwriting decisions for an insurance policy. With these and other advantages and features that will become hereinafter apparent, a more complete understanding of the nature of the invention can be obtained by referring to the following detailed description and to the drawings appended hereto.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A standalone medical risk underwriting computer system comprising: a medical risk factor computer storage unit for receiving, storing, and providing medical risk factor data; a policy data storage unit for receiving, storing, and providing policy data; a processor co-located with and coupled to the medical risk factor computer storage unit and the policy data storage unit, wherein the processor is configured to: generate a first graphical interface to receive a password to access the standalone medical risk underwriting computer system; responsive to receipt of an invalid password, block access to the standalone medical risk underwriting computer system; responsive to receipt of a valid password, determine whether a predetermined event, comprising expiration of a period of time since issuance of the password greater than a predetermined period of time, has occurred; responsive to a determination that the predetermined event has occurred, delete at least some data stored on components of the standalone medical risk underwriting computer system; responsive to a determination that the predetermined event has not occurred: generate a second graphical interface including an index of selectable medical risk factors; responsive to receipt of a selected medical risk factor, generate for display a suggested medical risk value corresponding to the selected medical risk factor; responsive to display of the suggested medical risk value corresponding to the selected medical risk factor, determine whether an adjustment to the suggested medical risk value was received; responsive to a determination that the adjustment to the suggested medical risk value was received, store the adjusted medical risk value; responsive to a determination that the adjustment to the suggested medical risk value was not received, store the suggested medical risk value; repeat the steps of displaying suggested medical risk values for a plurality of selected medical risk factors and storing one of the adjusted medical risk value and the suggested medical risk value corresponding to each selected medical risk factor; automatically calculate an overall risk level associated with the policy based on the medical risk value associated with each of the plurality of selected medical risk factors; automatically generate a recommended underwriting decision based on the overall risk level; and automatically create, based on the recommended underwriting decision, a decision document comprising one of an acceptance of coverage and a denial of coverage.

“2. The system of claim 1, wherein the processor is further configured, responsive to the determination that the predetermined event has not occurred, to: receive initial information associated with the policy having a policy identifier, locally save at least one file associating the overall risk level with at least one of the policy identifier and the medical risk value associated with each of the plurality of medical risk factors.

“3. The system of claim 1, wherein the processor is configured to automatically create the decision document using an external application.

“4. The system of claim 1, wherein the processor is further configured to transmit, by a communication device, the calculated overall risk level, but not the medical risk value associated with each of the plurality of medical risk factors, to an agent computing device.

“5. The system of claim 1, wherein the medical risk underwriting system further includes a spreadsheet application, and wherein the processor being configured to generate for display a medical risk value comprises the processor being configured to generate for display the medical risk value using the spreadsheet application.

“6. The system of claim 5, wherein the processor being configured to generate the second graphical interface including the index of selectable medical risk factors comprises the processor being configured to display information from the medical risk factor computer storage unit based on a text characteristic of the medical risk factor data.

“7. The system of claim 6, wherein the text characteristic comprises at least one of: (i) a font, (ii) a font size, (iii) bold text, (iv) underlined text, (v) italicized text, (vi) a text color, and (vii) a text indentation.

“8. The system of claim 1, wherein the initial information comprises one or more of a name, date of birth, height, weight, and blood pressure of an individual corresponding to the policy; wherein the generated and displayed suggested medical risk value is based upon the initial information.

“9. A computerized method comprising: generating, by a processor of a standalone medical risk underwriting computer system, a first graphical interface to receive an underwriting computer system password; responsive to receipt of a valid password, determining, by the processor, whether a predetermined event has occurred; responsive to a determination that a predetermined event, comprising expiration of a period of time since issuance of the valid password greater than a predetermined period of time, has occurred, deleting, by the processor, at least some data stored on components of the medical risk underwriting computer system; responsive to a determination that the predetermined event has not occurred: generating, by the processor, a second graphical interface including an index of selectable medical risk factors; responsive to receipt of a selected medical risk factor, generating and displaying, by the processor, a suggested medical risk value corresponding to the selected medical risk factor; determining, by the processor, whether an adjustment to the suggested medical risk value was received; responsive to a determination that the adjustment to the suggested medical risk value was received, storing, by the processor, the adjusted medical risk value; responsive to a determination that the adjustment to the suggested medical risk value was not received, storing, by the processor, the suggested medical risk value; repeating the steps of displaying suggested medical risk values for a plurality of selected medical risk factors and storing one of the adjusted medical risk value and the suggested medical risk value corresponding to each selected medical risk factor; automatically calculating, by the processor, an overall risk level associated with the policy based on the medical risk value associated with each of the plurality of selected medical risk factors; automatically generating, by the processor, a recommended underwriting decision based on the overall risk level; and automatically creating, based on the recommended underwriting decision, a decision document comprising one of an acceptance of coverage and a denial of coverage.

“10. The method of claim 9, further comprising, responsive to the determination that the predetermined event has not occurred: receiving, by the processor, initial information associated with a potential policy, the potential policy having a policy identifier; locally saving, by the processor, at least one file associating the overall risk level with at least one of the policy identifier and the medical risk value associated with each of the plurality of medical risk factors.

“11. The method of claim 10, wherein automatically creating the decision document comprises automatically creating the decision document using an external application.

“12. The method of claim 11, further comprising transmitting, by a communication device coupled to the processor, the calculated overall risk level, but not the medical risk value associated with each of the plurality of medical risk factors, to an agent computing device.

“13. The method of claim 12, wherein generating and displaying a medical risk value comprises generating and displaying the medical risk value using a spreadsheet application.

“14. The method of claim 13, wherein generating the second graphical interface including the index of selectable medical risk factors comprises displaying information from a medical risk factor storage unit based on a text characteristic of medical risk factor data.

“15. The method of claim 14 wherein the text characteristic comprises at least one of: (i) a font, (ii) a font size, (iii) bold text, (iv) underlined text, (v) italicized text, (vi) a text color, and (vii) a text indentation.

“16. The method of claim 9, wherein the initial information comprises one or more of a name, date of birth, height, weight, and blood pressure of an individual corresponding to the policy; wherein the generated and displayed suggested medical risk value is based upon the initial information.”

For more information, see this patent application: Dellaripa, David F.; Heilman, Aubrey T.; Robbins, Gary. Security For Medical Risk Assessment System. Filed November 21, 2018 and posted March 21, 2019. 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=%2220190087912%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20190087912&RS=DN/20190087912

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