Patent Application Titled “Server-Neutral Network Architecture” Published Online (USPTO 20200258625)

2020 AUG 27 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Hospital & Nursing Home Daily -- According to news reporting originating from Washington, D.C., by NewsRx journalists, a patent application by the inventors Bishop, Colby (San Diego, CA); Shao, Anthony (Hillsborough, CA); Yeager, Jacques (Riverside, CA); Shastri, Subramanian (Carlsbad, CA), filed on February 7, 2020, was made available online on August 13, 2020.

The assignee for this patent application is Darroch Medical Solutions Inc. (San Diego, California, United States).

Reporters obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors: “In current hospital information technology (IT) systems, there are two methods by which medical instrument data is sent to Electronic Medical Record (EMR) systems. The first involves manual entry by nurses using workstations at a nurses’ station. However, this method is extremely tedious, prone to errors, and does little to improve nurse-patient interactions.

“The second method is through the use of vendor-specific servers, which communicate with all instruments supported by the vendor. Servers have been in place as a means of aggregating large amounts of data for any purpose; however, due to the nature of the medical field and the sheer amount of data, much of the information gathered is of little use. Also, in the current hospital architecture, there is no ‘gateway’ to monitor and filter what information is pushed to the EMR, and because of this there have been few efforts to coordinate the information.

“Data is automatically transmitted from instruments or medical devices to the servers using the hospital network. Unfortunately, virtually all of this data stays in the server or is discarded until an instrument specific alarm or a patient specific event occurs; an example of this could be if a patient’s blood pressure suddenly drops below predetermined levels or if a patient stops receiving an infusion.

“There are several problems with this method of data communication. First and foremost, vendor specific servers are costly to implement due to a requirement that multiple vendor specific servers will need to be implemented and supported if there are multiple medical devices from separate vendors. A typical hospital may consist of 250 rooms or more, with each room housing several medical instruments, each attempting to connect to its company-specific server. The resulting cost of establishing and maintaining a communication network could be as high as hundreds of thousands of dollars. Further, even with the investment, most of the patient data is inaccessible to medical practitioners’ unless they are at designated workstations.

“A second problem with the server architecture is that there are significant latencies in the transmission of data from instruments to medical practitioners. Most instruments send information to their respective servers in batches, often a few times a day. Information that is stored in these servers is also only transferred to the EMR at designated times during a day as well, usually once a day at night. Hospitals could increase the frequency in which medical data is sent from server to EMR, but with so many company-specific servers in place, each with their own information protocols, it becomes nearly impossible for a cost-effective network to accommodate. This means that EMRs may take several hours to update information at a nurse’s station, which in turn would render patient data too outdated to be of use in treatment. Even worse, many medical practitioners have claimed that they elect to manually chart data due to the frustration of trying to learn how to properly use EMRs.

“A third problem is that patient data from medical instruments is available mostly only at a nurse’s station. Unfortunately, nurses are rarely at their station during shifts and are instead focused on providing care to their patients. This results in a mismatch of information between practitioners who are making rounds and those who are monitoring the EMRs.

“Thus, it becomes readily apparent that there exists a great need for information to be presented to medical practitioners in a timely manner and at their location, not just at workstations. There is also a need for systems and methods of delivering medical data without a server-based network architecture. Medical data is extremely important in showing the progression of a patient’s health and can even be used to predict adverse events as well as a patient’s potential recovery. But today’s information architecture does not provide the right infrastructure for this information to be properly delivered to a nurse practitioner or doctor without introducing significant additional computer hardware, network bandwidth and data latency.”

In addition to obtaining background information on this patent application, NewsRx editors also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent application: “The present disclosure, in its many embodiments, alleviates to a great extent the disadvantages of server-based architecture for transmitting medical data. Disclosed embodiments provide a way to deliver medical instrument data to medical practitioners reliably and in a timely manner without the need for a server-based architecture. Using any form of device-to-device communications (e.g. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, ZigBee), the Care Life Unit (CLU) consists of a means of acquiring data directly from medical instruments by a patient bedside, aggregating the data thus acquired to develop a short-term profile of a patient’s medical condition, and delivering both the data and the profile to a medical practitioner in a manner that is easily used and manipulated.

“We refer to the information and analyses presented to the medical practitioner as a patient proxy, implying that the CLU presents the practitioner a medical proxy representation of the patient. With the patient proxy, the practitioner would see all the patient information in one centralized location in real time. In exemplary embodiments, each bed will have one CLU, tagged to a specific patient and corresponding with the patient’s medical practitioner.

“Instead of medical devices connecting only to their vendor-specific servers, devices will instead also connect to the CLU. The CLU, acting as an information intermediary, will be able to organize the raw data that comes in from each of the medical instruments. It will then directly communicate the patient profile to a mobile device that can be carried by a medical practitioner.

“By not relying on servers, information can be pushed from device to practitioner in real time. Further, it moves the hospital architecture away from one that centralizes the collection of data from all instruments supported by a vendor over the hospital network, to one that collects data from multiple instruments by the bedside and aggregates data into a single patient profile and communicates patient profile over the hospital network. We call an architecture that supports real time device-to-device communication without the use of servers of patient profile as a ‘server-neutral’ architecture, and state this as a primary invention claimed in this document.

“In addition to mobile devices, the system will have the ability to push patient profiles to a nurse’s station. The user interface available in the mobile device and the workstation will have an EMR update function. All this will facilitate redundancy in the availability of information and provide a failsafe mechanism in the mitigation of adverse events during hospitalization. We call the architecture that combines device-to-device communication with traditional server-based communication as Server Neutral Architecture.

“Exemplary embodiments of a computer-implemented server-neutral communications architecture comprise a communication device including a housing and a transceiver circuit, a processor, and a battery disposed within the housing, one or more medical instruments, and a data analytics system. The medical instruments collect data from a medical patient and transmit the data relating to the medical patient directly to the communication device. The data analytics system determines which data come from a particular medical instrument. The one or more medical instruments may include infusion pumps, vital signs monitors, and/or bed scales. The medical instruments communicate directly with the communication device independent of transmitting the data through a server. The communication device communicates information about a patient’s medical condition directly to a mobile device or a workstation. The communications architecture may include a user interface viewable on a mobile device.

“In exemplary embodiments, the information about a patient’s medical condition is communicated to a mobile device or a workstation in real time. The information about a patient’s medical condition may be based on determinations of the data analytics system. In exemplary embodiments, the data analytics system determines whether a patient may experience an adverse event through comparisons between the patient’s progression and trends and an adverse event repository. The communications architecture may cause an alarm to sound when the data relating to the medical patient is outside pre-determined boundary parameters or a medical instrument has stopped functioning or changed its rate, or a patient may experience an adverse event.

“In exemplary embodiments, there are a plurality of communication devices and each of the plurality of communication devices collects data from a different medical patient. In exemplary embodiments, each of the plurality of communication devices is in communication with the same mobile device or workstation. The medical instruments may communicate directly with the communication device without transmitting the data through a server.

“Exemplary computer-implemented methods of analyzing, authenticating and transmitting medical data independent of a server comprise transmitting medical data from one or more medical instruments directly to a communication device independent of transmitting the data through a server, developing a patient proxy based upon the medical data, and communicating the patient proxy directly to a mobile device or a workstation in real time. Developing a patient proxy may comprise creating one or more boundary parameters for the data and determining whether any data is outside the boundary parameters. In exemplary embodiments, developing a patient proxy further comprises creating trends based on the aggregated data and comparing trends to existing adverse event symptoms. Exemplary methods may further comprise sounding an alarm when selected data is outside pre-determined boundary parameters or a particular medical instrument has stopped functioning, changed its rate, or if a patient may experience an adverse event. In exemplary embodiments, a plurality of prioritizable alarms are provided.

“Exemplary methods further comprise displaying room numbers or bed numbers corresponding to patients. Disclosed methods may further comprise displaying patient vital signs data, other measured metrics, or a patient’s progression relating to a vital sign. Exemplary methods comprise presenting a color scheme wherein different colors represent how a patient is progressing. In exemplary embodiments, the communication device comprises a plurality of communication devices, each of the plurality of communication devices collects data from a different medical patient, and each of the plurality of communication devices is in communication with the same mobile device or workstation.

“It is an object of disclosed embodiments to wirelessly acquire and analyze data from at least three treatment and monitoring devices (i.e. Infusion Pumps, Vital Signs Monitors, and Bed Scales) and communicate a cohesive patient profile with a handheld device through the mobile application independent of a vendor-specific server. It is an object of disclosed embodiments to wirelessly acquire and analyze data from treatment and monitoring devices attached to a hospitalized patient and communicate changes in the patient’s condition to a nurse’s handheld device in a live hospital environment. It is an object of disclosed embodiments to wirelessly connect to the three bedside instruments, analyze incoming data, and push all relevant patient data and potential onset adverse event information to the healthcare practitioner in both simulated and live environments.

“Accordingly, it is seen that systems and methods of analyzing, authenticating and transmitting medical data independent of a server are provided. These and other features and advantages will be appreciated from review of the following detailed description, along with the accompanying figures in which like reference numbers refer to like parts throughout.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A computer-implemented server-neutral communications architecture comprising: a communication device including a housing and a transceiver circuit, a processor, and a battery disposed within the housing; one or more medical instruments collecting data from a medical patient and transmitting the data relating to the medical patient directly to the communication device; a data analytics system determining which data come from a particular medical instrument; wherein the medical instruments communicate directly with the communication device independent of transmitting the data through a server; and wherein the communication device communicates information about a patient’s medical condition directly to a mobile device or a workstation.

“2. The server-neutral communications architecture of claim 1 wherein the information about a patient’s medical condition is communicated to a mobile device or a workstation in real time.

“3. The server-neutral communications architecture of claim 1 wherein the information about a patient’s medical condition is based on determinations of the data analytics system.

“4. The server-neutral communications architecture of claim 1 wherein the data analytics system determines whether a patient may experience an adverse event through comparisons between the patient’s progression and trends and an adverse event repository.

“5. The server-neutral communications architecture of claim 1 wherein an alarm sounds when the data relating to the medical patient is outside pre-determined boundary parameters or a medical instrument has stopped functioning or changed its rate, or a patient may experience an adverse event.

“6. The server-neutral communications architecture of claim 1 wherein the one or more medical instruments include one or more of: infusion pumps, vital signs monitors, and bed scales.

“7. The server-neutral communications architecture of claim 1 further comprising a user interface viewable on a mobile device.

“8. The server-neutral communications architecture of claim 1 wherein the communication device comprises a plurality of communication devices.

“9. The server-neutral communications architecture of claim 8 wherein each of the plurality of communication devices collects data from a different medical patient.

“10. The server-neutral communications architecture of claim 9 wherein each of the plurality of communication devices is in communication with the same mobile device or workstation.

“11. The server-neutral communications architecture of claim 1 wherein the medical instruments communicate directly with the communication device without transmitting the data through a server.

“12. A computer-implemented method of analyzing, authenticating and transmitting medical data independent of a server, comprising: transmitting medical data from one or more medical instruments directly to a communication device independent of transmitting the data through a server; developing a patient proxy based upon the medical data; and communicating the patient proxy directly to a mobile device or a workstation in real time.

“13. The computer-implemented method of claim 12 wherein developing a patient proxy comprises creating one or more boundary parameters for the data and determining whether any data is outside the boundary parameters.

“14. The computer-implemented method of claim 13 wherein developing a patient proxy further comprises creating trends based on the aggregated data and comparing trends to existing adverse event symptoms.

“15. The computer-implemented method of claim 13 further comprising sounding an alarm when selected data is outside pre-determined boundary parameters or a particular medical instrument has stopped functioning, changed its rate, or if a patient may experience an adverse event.

“16. The computer-implemented method of claim 12 further comprising displaying room numbers or bed numbers corresponding to patients.

“17. The computer-implemented method of claim 14 further comprising displaying patient vital signs data, other measured metrics, or a patient’s progression relating to a vital sign.

“18. The computer-implemented method of claim 15 further comprising providing a plurality of prioritizable alarms.

“19. The computer-implemented method of claim 12 further comprising presenting a color scheme wherein different colors represent how a patient is progressing.

“20. The computer-implemented method of claim 12 wherein the communication device comprises a plurality of communication devices, each of the plurality of communication devices collects data from a different medical patient, and each of the plurality of communication devices is in communication with the same mobile device or workstation.”

For more information, see this patent application: Bishop, Colby; Shao, Anthony; Yeager, Jacques; Shastri, Subramanian. Server-Neutral Network Architecture. Filed February 7, 2020 and posted August 13, 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=%2220200258625%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20200258625&RS=DN/20200258625

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