Patent Issued for Death certificate information processing techniques (USPTO 11341267): United Services Automobile Association

2022 JUN 15 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- A patent by the inventors Haverlah, Sharon Kay (Bulverde, TX, US), Nagelberg, Alexander Benetto (San Antonio, TX, US), filed on August 20, 2019, was published online on May 24, 2022, according to news reporting originating from Alexandria, Virginia, by NewsRx correspondents.

Patent number 11341267 is assigned to United Services Automobile Association (San Antonio, Texas, United States).

The following quote was obtained by the news editors from the background information supplied by the inventors: “The present disclosure relates to processing and maintenance of medical records. More specifically, the present disclosure relates to systems and methods for receiving information related to death certificates and updating records of an individual based on the information.

“Certain records, such as electronic medical records, may include sensitive information related to an individual. As an example, medical records may include sensitive information associated with an individual, such as information identifying the individual, a medical history of the individual, health insurance information associated with the individual, and/or the like. Accordingly, regulatory requirements, such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), may provide specific instructions regarding the use of the electronic records. As a result, modifying and/or updating medical records may be cumbersome. For example, medical information, such as information on a death certificate, may be verified and confirmed prior to being incorporated into a medical record. In some instances, verification may depend on processing of several documents via one or more governmental entities, such as the issuing of death certificates. Thus, the verification process may increase an amount of time to update and process information associated with death certificates.”

In addition to the background information obtained for this patent, NewsRx journalists also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent: “One or more specific embodiments will be described below. In an effort to provide a concise description of these embodiments, not all features of an actual implementation are described in the specification. It should be appreciated that in the development of any such actual implementation, as in any engineering or design project, numerous implementation-specific decisions must be made to achieve the developers’ specific goals, such as compliance with system-related and business-related constraints, which may vary from one implementation to another. Moreover, it should be appreciated that such a development effort might be complex and time consuming, but would nevertheless be a routine undertaking of design, fabrication, and manufacture for those of ordinary skill having the benefit of this disclosure.

“The present disclosure relates to death certificate information processing. Embodiments of the present disclosure utilize blockchain and distributed ledger techniques as a shared infrastructure that connects all the parties involved (e.g., records owner(s) and various authoritative entities, such as notary public, the state department, foreign consulates/embassies, and so forth), and utilize the immutable nature of the distributed ledger to track the authentication certification history of electronic information, with a verifiable identity of each certifying entity in the chain of the death certificate. Using the embodiments described here, the entire certification history of each piece of electronic information may be tracked and verified on the blockchain/distributed ledger. Doing so, among other things, reduces the time to acquire authentication certification from multiple authorities from days or weeks down to minutes, saves cost of mailing and fees for representative services, eliminates the risk of important documents getting lost, and reduces fraud risks.

“Embodiments of the present disclosure provide many other advantages. Because the embodiments described herein employ distributed ledgers (e.g., blockchains) to store and publish information regarding death certificate information, the death certificate information data is immutable and less prone to fraud, destruction, or corruption compared to storage on traditional storage systems. Accordingly, the embodiments described herein avoid the expenditure of processing, memory, storage, networking, and/or other computational resources that may be used when traditional systems attempt to restore information that has been lost or corrupted. Similarly, by providing a more secure and reliable mechanism for managing certified information, the embodiments described herein avoid the expenditure of computing resources that may be used when traditional systems are required to back out or otherwise reverse fraudulent or erroneously performed information entry. Moreover, through the utilization of smart contracts and/or side chains, certain embodiments significantly increase the speed at which transactions occur, compared to traditional systems. The embodiments described herein also increase the speed of transfer processing by related components and/or systems, such as title search systems, legal support systems, systems of government agencies (e.g., building agencies, title registrars, etc.), and so forth. Moreover, by managing records through distributed ledger system(s), the embodiments described herein provide superior electronic provenance compared to human operated systems.

“Embodiments of the present disclosure are directed to systems, devices, methods, and computer-readable media for managing certification of certain information (e.g., death certificate information) using information stored on a distributed ledger (e.g., a blockchain). The embodiments described herein employ a distributed ledger, such as a blockchain, to securely store data describing, for example, the current possessor(s) of the information, the previous possessor (s) of the information, the history of transfers of the information, accuracy of the information, and/or other aspects regarding the information. Use of a distributed ledger may provide an immutable, readily auditable record of the “chain of custody” of the information. In certain embodiments, the information is a physical (e.g., tangible) document, but in other embodiments, the information may be an electronic document.

“The embodiments described herein provide improved systems and methods for processing information related to death certificates. More specifically, certain embodiments are directed to transferring and verifying death certificate information via a distributed ledger. As the death certificate information may include sensitive information related to an individual, such as a medical history of the individual and/or information associated with others related to the individual, the access by one or more entities may be restricted based on one or more factors. Thus, the death certificate information may be encrypted and access to the death certificate information, such as to verify and/or modify the death certificate information, may be selectively permitted based on a computing device of certain trusted entities. In some embodiments, the distributed ledger is public and any person of the general public may transfer (e.g., append) death certificate information to the distributed ledger, where the death certificate information is verified by trusted entities (e.g., physicians, healthcare providers, health insurance companies). In additional or alternative embodiments, the distributed ledger is private and only trusted entities may transfer and/or verify death certificate information.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A system comprising: at least one processor; at least one memory communicatively coupled to the at least one processor, the at least one memory storing instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor, are configured to cause the at least one processor to: receive a block of first death certificate information from a node of a distributed ledger system, wherein the first death certificate information is associated with an individual, and the first death certificate information comprises a portion of a death certificate information set; determine, based at least in part on the death certificate information, a record to be updated, wherein the record is associated with the individual; and update the record to generate an updated record; at least one additional processor; and at least one additional memory communicatively coupled to the at least one additional processor, the at least one additional memory storing other instructions that, when executed by the at least one additional processor, are configured to cause the at least one additional processor to: receive second death certificate information from an additional node of the distributed ledger system, wherein the second death certificate information comprises another portion of the death certificate information set, and the second death certificate information comprises verification data; and verify that the second death certificate information is valid based at least in part on the verification data.

“2. The system of claim 1, wherein the instructions, when executed by the at least one processor, are configured to cause the at least one processor to receive the first death certificate information associated with the individual based at least in part on a matching of data in the first death certificate information to data associated with the individual from a plurality of data associated with individuals being monitored in the distributed ledger system.

“3. The system of claim 2, wherein the instructions, when executed by the at least one processor, are configured to cause the at least one processor to request the first death certificate information from the distributed ledger system upon receiving a notification associated with the individual.

“4. The system of claim 3, wherein the instructions, when executed by the at least one processor, are configured to cause the at least one processor to request the first death certificate information via providing identification information associated with the first death certificate information.

“5. The system of claim 1, wherein the instructions, when executed by the at least one processor, are configured to cause the at least one processor to update the record based at least in part on the first death certificate information.

“6. The system of claim 1, wherein the distributed ledger system is a public distributed ledger system, wherein the node is configured to transmit third death certificate information to the public distributed ledger system.

“7. The system of claim 1, wherein the instructions, when executed by the at least one processor, are configured to cause the at least one processor to save the death certificate information to the at least one memory.

“8. The system of claim 1, wherein the instructions, when executed by the at least one processor, are configured to cause the at least one processor to: determine, based at least in part on the updated record, an additional record to be updated, wherein the additional record is associated with an additional individual; and update the additional record to generate an updated additional record.

“9. A system comprising: a node of a plurality of nodes of a distributed ledger system, the node comprising: at least one processor; and at least one memory communicatively coupled to the at least one processor, the at least one memory storing instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor, are configured to cause the at least one processor to: receive first death certificate information from another node of the plurality of nodes, wherein the first death certificate information comprises verification data, and the first death certificate information comprises a portion of a death certificate information set; verify that the first death certificate information is valid based at least in part on the verification data; access a blockchain associated with an individual upon verifying that the first death certificate information is valid; and add at least one block to the blockchain based at least in part on validation of the first death certificate information to immutably store the first death certificate information as part of the blockchain; an additional node of the plurality of nodes of the distributed ledger system, the additional node comprising: at least one other processor; and at least one other memory communicatively coupled to the at least one other processor, the at least one other memory storing other instructions that, when executed by the at least one other processor, are configured to cause the at least one other processor to: receive second death certificate information from the another node of the plurality of nodes, wherein the second death certificate information comprises another portion of the death certificate set, and the second death certificate information comprises another verification data; and verify that the second death certificate information is valid based at least in part on the another verification data.

“10. The system of claim 9, wherein the distributed ledger system is a private distributed ledger system, wherein each node of the plurality of nodes of the private distributed ledger system comprises a computing device, and wherein each computing device is configured to receive the first death certificate information.

“11. The system of claim 9, wherein the instructions, when executed by the at least one processor, are configured to cause the at least one processor to verify the first death certificate information via verifying signature data associated with the verification data.

“12. The system of claim 9, wherein the instructions, when executed by the at least one processor, are configured to cause the at least one processor to transmit a signal to other nodes of the plurality of nodes upon verifying that the first death certificate information is valid to cause adding the at least one block to the blockchain stored in the other nodes.

“13. The system of claim 9, wherein the instructions, when executed by the at least one processor, are configured to cause the at least one processor to transmit a signal to other nodes of the plurality of nodes upon determining that the first death certificate information is invalid, and wherein the instructions, when executed by the at least one processor, are configured to cause the at least one processor to flag other nodes of the plurality of nodes upon determining that the first death certificate information is invalid, wherein the at least one block is not added to the blockchain upon determining that the first death certificate information is invalid.

“14. The system of claim 9, wherein the other instructions, when executed by the at least one other processor, are configured to cause the at least one other processor to transmit a signal to the node upon verifying that the second death certificate information is valid, wherein, upon receiving the signal, the instructions, when executed by the at least one processor, are configured to cause the at least one processor to: access a record associated with the individual; determine that the record of the individual comprises updates triggered by the second death certificate information; and update the additional record according to the updates.

“15. A system comprising: at least one processor; at least one memory communicatively coupled to the at least one processor, the at least one memory storing instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor, are configured to cause the at least one processor to: receive a blockchain from a first node of a distributed ledger system, wherein the blockchain comprises at least one block of first death certificate information, wherein the first death certificate information comprises a portion of a death certificate information set; identify that the first death certificate information is associated with an individual; append the blockchain upon identifying that the first death certificate information is associated with the individual to generate an appended blockchain; and determine a record to be updated based at least in part on the first death certificate information, wherein the record is associated with the individual; at least one additional processor; and at least one additional memory communicatively coupled to the at least one additional processor, the at least one additional memory storing other instructions that, when executed by the at least one additional processor, are configured to cause the at least one additional processor to: receive the blockchain from a second node of the distributed ledger system, wherein the blockchain comprises at least one additional block of second death certificate information, wherein the second death certificate information comprises an additional portion of the death certificate information set, and the second death certificate information comprises verification data; and verify that the second death certificate information is valid based at least in part on the verification data.”

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

URL and more information on this patent, see: Haverlah, Sharon Kay. Death certificate information processing techniques. U.S. Patent Number 11341267, filed August 20, 2019, 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=11341267.PN.&OS=PN/11341267RS=PN/11341267

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