Patent Issued for Creating digital health assets (USPTO 11341555): Mdsave Shared Services Inc.

2022 JUN 14 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- From Alexandria, Virginia, NewsRx journalists report that a patent by the inventors Ketchel, III, Paul J. (Nashville, TN, US), filed on July 7, 2021, was published online on May 24, 2022.

The patent’s assignee for patent number 11341555 is Mdsave Shared Services Inc. (Brentwood, Tennessee, United States).

News editors obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors: “Medical services are services provided to a medical patient. Some medical services may help improve or maintain a patient’s health, based on disease prevention, diagnosis, or treatment. A medical service may be provided by a doctor licensed to practice medicine. The practice of medicine encompasses medical procedures performed for a patient, which may include both preventive care and treatment. A medical doctor may provide preventive care and treatment through a medical practice provisioned with diagnostic and treatment facilities. For example, a medical practice may provide preventive care and treatment services through the work of trained or licensed medical professionals in a medical facility.

“Medical service providers include doctors, hospitals, and health insurers. A provider may offer medical services to patients by provisioning medical resources such as, for example, laboratory, imaging, treatment, or surgical facilities, to provide the services. Some medical services may require specially trained or licensed medical professionals. For example, a medical practice providing diagnosis and treatment for joint pain may provide medical services through the work of an orthopedic specialist. In some scenarios, patient access to a specialized professional or facility may be limited by cost, or availability. Some specialized medical professionals and related facilities may be scarce.

“A medical practice may limit the medical procedures offered to patients based on the availability of specialized professionals and facilities at a given time or location. For example, the services offered to a patient may be determined based on allocating surgeons to various surgical facility locations at specific times. Services supplied to patients may be limited to the allocated medical professionals and facilities, even when medical service demand exceeds supply at a given location or time. A medical practice providing many types of medical services may expend significant resources adapting the offered services to demand as cost and demand change. Some medical practices may fail to capture potential revenue lost when resources to provide medical services are underutilized relative to medical service demand.

“The price of healthcare services varies depending on specialty, procedure, and physician practice. In the United States, many patients do not have access to a simple way to shop and compare the price of common medical procedures. Due to the current managed care-based payor system in the US, the cost of treatment is often determined by managed care organizations.

“These managed care organizations have specific formularies for drugs and procedures designed specifically to patients’ individual health plans, which restrict the drugs and procedures available to patients in their particular plans. Patients have historically had no access to these price lists or formularies and have had very few tools to assist them in finding and comparing health care services or predetermining the cost of a procedure. Currently prospective patients who chose to compare medical costs are forced to conduct extensive, often inefficient, and time-consuming research to compare medical procedures prior to treatment.

“The rising cost of healthcare is having a dramatic effect on the U.S. healthcare system. Healthcare costs continue to outpace pace inflationary growth, provider reimbursement rates continue to fall, and the cost of patient insurance premiums are increasing. To lower monthly premium costs, many patients are choosing to purchase (and employers are choosing to offer) high deductible health plans as an alternative to traditional higher premium PPO health plans.

“These high deductible plans require patients to pay cash payments for medical services until the high deductible is satisfied, and once this deductible has been met, the insurance carrier begins to cover medical costs. As a result, many patients are seeing exponential increases in out-of-pocket expenses for medical procedures and services. In addition to more patients selecting high deductible plans, many patients cannot afford increased payments and are becoming uninsured or underinsured. As the number of patients who are uninsured, underinsured, or on high deductible plans grows, the need for a mechanism that allows patients to find discounted medical services increases and an efficient payment system.”

As a supplement to the background information on this patent, NewsRx correspondents also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent: “Apparatus and associated methods relate to encoding a digital asset representing a service bundle, with parameters uniquely identifying the bundle, based on the bundle definition, and with a value and availability determined as a function of asset state. The bundle may include a health service. The encoded asset may be a digital asset token, configured in computing device memory, or transported via network, to transfer possession, transfer ownership, verify ownership, change state, or access a bundled service. The asset token may include individually manageable sub-tokens. The bundle definition may include a unique combination of facility, location, time, or professional resources allocated to provide a service. The bundle may be certified, based on verified funding or confirmed resource allocation. Asset class may be based on certification. The asset may be non-fungible based on the unique resource combination’s inherently limited supply, permitting the bundle to have intrinsic value with a demand-based price.

“In an aspect, an apparatus is disclosed, comprising: a processor; and, a memory, operably coupled with the processor, wherein the memory encodes processor executable program instructions and data to program and configure the processor to cause the apparatus to perform operations comprising: receive an electronic message comprising a service definition; determine a resource available to provide a service, based on the service definition; create an asset comprising the resource and the service; and, encode the asset in a digital asset token.

“The operations performed by the apparatus may further comprise broadcast the digital asset token to a DL (Distributed Ledger).

“The service definition may further comprise a service type.

“The service definition may further comprise a location and time.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. An apparatus comprising: a processor; and a memory configured to be operably coupled to the processor, wherein the memory comprises encoded data and processor executable program instructions, wherein the data and instructions jointly configure and program the apparatus that the instructions when executed by the processor cause the apparatus to perform operations comprising: receive a service offer from a service provider, wherein the service offer comprises identification of a named healthcare service provider; and construct in the memory a digital asset token for the service offer, the digital asset token comprising: a header, encoding: an immutable asset identifier representing the service offer; an immutable asset exchange identifier; an immutable asset creation time representing the time at which the digital asset token was constructed; a mutable asset state value representing the minting state; a payload, encoding; the service offer; a copy of the asset identifier encoded by the header; the hash of the header; a nonce; send the header without the payload to a first application server; and send the payload without the header to a second application server.

“2. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the asset identifier is unique within a predetermined namespace.

“3. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the exchange identifier is unique within a predetermined namespace.

“4. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the operations performed by the apparatus further comprise: in response to receiving payment for the digital asset, set the state value to sold.

“5. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the service offer further comprises the service offer encoding a plurality of references to a respective plurality of smart contracts, and wherein the operations performed by the apparatus further comprise broadcast to a Distributed Ledger (DL) the asset degree of certification determined as a function of the fraction of the smart contracts that obligate at least one resource to provide at least one service associated with the service offer.

“6. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the service offer further comprises a price.

“7. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the payload further comprises a reference to a contract related to the named healthcare service provider.

“8. The apparatus of claim 7, wherein the payload further comprises an asset class value determined as a function of the contract status.

“9. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the service offer further comprises: a reference to a service bundle; a reference to a contract defining service bundle provision terms, and an asset class value determined as a function of the contract status.

“10. The apparatus of claim 9, wherein the service bundle further comprises a healthcare service.

“11. The apparatus of claim 10, wherein the contract encodes a location and time at which the healthcare service will be performed.

“12. The apparatus of claim 10, wherein the healthcare service is a primary healthcare service.

“13. The apparatus of claim 12, wherein the service bundle further comprises a secondary healthcare service related to the primary healthcare service.

“14. The apparatus of claim 9, wherein the service bundle further comprises a plurality of related service bundles.

“15. The apparatus of claim 14, wherein each service bundle of the plurality of related service bundles further comprises a subcontract encoding a location, time, facility, and professional resource allocated to provide the service bundle.

“16. An apparatus comprising: a processor; and a memory configured to be operably coupled to the processor, wherein the memory comprises encoded data and processor executable program instructions, wherein the data and instructions jointly configure and program the apparatus that the instructions when executed by the processor cause the apparatus to perform operations comprising: receive a service offer from a service provider; and construct in the memory a digital asset token for the service offer, the digital asset token comprising: a header, encoding: an immutable asset identifier representing the service offer, wherein the asset identifier is unique within a predetermined namespace; an immutable asset exchange identifier, wherein the exchange identifier is unique within a predetermined namespace; an immutable asset creation time representing the time at which the digital asset token was constructed; a mutable asset state value representing the trading state; a payload, encoding: the service offer; a copy of the asset identifier encoded by the header; the hash of the header; a reference to an asset bundle, wherein the asset bundle comprises at least one healthcare service; a reference to at least one contract defining asset bundle provision terms; an asset class determined as a function of the at least one contract status; a nonce; send the header without the payload to an asset exchange identified by the asset exchange identifier; and broadcast to a DL the asset degree of certification determined as a function of the fraction of the at least one contract that obligates at least one resource to provide at least one service associated with the service offer.

“17. The apparatus of claim 16, wherein the at least one contract encodes a procedure, a location, and a time associated with the at least one healthcare service.

“18. The apparatus of claim 17, wherein the at least one healthcare service is a primary healthcare service.

“19. The apparatus of claim 18, wherein the asset bundle further comprises a secondary healthcare service related to the primary healthcare service.

“20. The apparatus of claim 16, wherein the asset bundle further comprises a plurality of related asset bundles.

“21. The apparatus of claim 20, wherein each asset bundle of the plurality of related asset bundles further comprises a subcontract encoding a location, time, facility, and professional resource allocated to provide a service included with the asset bundle.

“22. An apparatus comprising: a processor; and a memory configured to be operably coupled to the processor, wherein the memory comprises encoded data and processor executable program instructions, wherein the data and instructions jointly configure and program the apparatus that the instructions when executed by the processor cause the apparatus to perform operations comprising: receive a service offer from a service provider; and construct in the memory a digital asset token for the service offer, the digital asset token comprising: a header, encoding: an immutable asset identifier representing the service offer, wherein the asset identifier is unique within a predetermined namespace; an immutable asset exchange identifier, wherein the exchange identifier is unique within a predetermined namespace; an immutable asset creation time representing the time at which the digital asset token was constructed; a mutable asset state value selected from the group consisting of minting, issued, trading, sold, redeemed, and burned; a payload, encoding: the service offer; a copy of the asset identifier encoded by the header; the hash of the header; a reference to a plurality of related asset bundles, wherein each asset bundle of the plurality of related asset bundles comprises at least one healthcare asset; a reference to at least one contract defining provision terms of the related asset bundles, wherein the at least one contract comprises one or more subcontract encoding a location, time, facility, and professional resource allocated to provide each of the at least one healthcare asset of the related asset bundles; an asset class determined as a function of contract status; a nonce; and send the header without the payload to an asset exchange identified by the asset exchange identifier, and send the payload without the header to an application server.

“23. The apparatus of claim 22, wherein the operations performed by the apparatus further comprise: receive a digital asset token representing a certified service bundle digital asset having a current degree of certification; determine if the status of at least one contract changed, based on contract status received in response to a contract status query comprising the asset identifier; in response to determining the status of the at least one contract changed, determine an updated asset degree of certification based on the fraction of the at least one contract that obligates at least one resource to provide at least one asset; and broadcast the updated asset degree of certification to a DL with the asset identifier.

“24. The apparatus of claim 22, wherein the asset class determined as a function of contract status further comprises the asset class based on the fraction of subcontracts binding a party to provide an asset, and wherein the contract comprises a smart contract.”

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

For additional information on this patent, see: Ketchel, III, Paul J. Creating digital health assets. U.S. Patent Number 11341555, filed July 7, 2021, and published online on May 24, 2022. Patent URL: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=11341555.PN.&OS=PN/11341555RS=PN/11341555

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