Patent Issued for Home event detection and processing (USPTO 11481847): Allstate Insurance Company

2022 NOV 15 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- A patent by the inventors Corder, Bryan Keith (Gurnee, IL, US), Srey, Rothana (Dekalb, IL, US), Suizzo, Nicholas A. (Cody, WY, US), Willett, Sean P. (Chicago, IL, US), filed on October 29, 2019, was published online on October 25, 2022, according to news reporting originating from Alexandria, Virginia, by NewsRx correspondents.

Patent number 11481847 is assigned to Allstate Insurance Company (Northbrook, Illinois, United States).

The following quote was obtained by the news editors from the background information supplied by the inventors: “People are often looking for ways to protect their homes. People buy insurance for exactly that reason-to protect against unforeseen risks. However, breakage, damage, etc. may occur in a home or dwelling. Although damage can be minimized if the problem or issue is recognized as soon as it occurs or as soon as possible after it occurs, often, the damage or breakage is not detected right away. For instance, a pipe may be leaking and thereby causing water damage. However, the leak might not be detected under damage to a wall, ceiling, floor, etc. is visible.

“Further, some conventional systems require a user to initiate an insurance claim to cover the damage and/or coordinate repair. This may be time consuming and inefficient in that it could delay the repair process.”

In addition to the background information obtained for this patent, NewsRx journalists also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent: “The following presents a simplified summary in order to provide a basic understanding of some aspects of the disclosure. The summary is not an extensive overview of the disclosure. It is neither intended to identify key or critical elements of the disclosure nor to delineate the scope of the disclosure. The following summary merely presents some concepts of the disclosure in a simplified form as a prelude to the description below.

“Aspects of the disclosure relate to systems, methods, apparatuses and computer-readable media for receiving data from one or more sensors associated with one or more home devices, such as appliances, home systems, etc. The data may be used to determine whether the home device is operating within an expected range or, if it is outside of an expected range or threshold, whether a home event has occurred. Upon occurrence of the home event, an insurance claim to cover any damage caused by the home event may be initiated and/or processed. In some examples, repair of any damage may also be coordinated by the system. In some arrangements, the initiation and/or processing of the claim, and/or coordination of the repair may be performed without any additional input from the user associated with the policy, home device, etc. or with limited additional input from the user.

“Other features and advantages of the disclosure will be apparent from the additional description provided herein.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A home event and detection processing system comprising: at least one sensing device in communication with and monitoring one or more aspects of a home device of a user; at least one video monitoring device to capture and transmit image data related to the home device of the user, the at least one video monitoring device being in communication with the at least one sensing device; a processing unit comprising a processor; and a non-transient memory unit storing computer-executable instructions configured to: receive, via a wireless telecommunication network and in real-time, first information including signals from the at least one sensing device monitoring one or more aspects of a home device; analyze the received signals to determine that a home event has occurred; activate the at least one video monitoring device in response to an indication received from the at least one sensing device; responsive to activating the at least one video monitoring device, continuously transmit, via the at least one video monitoring device, video data of the home device; receive, from the at least one video monitoring device, the video data of the home device; based on the analyzed received signals and responsive to determining that the home event has occurred, receive second information different from the first information, the second information being associated with an insurance policy covering the home device; based on the second information, determine an insurable event deductible and determine whether default user instructions identified and selected by a user to designate processes to be performed are available; responsive to determining that the default user instructions are available, determine whether the default user instructions include an identified and selected instruction to automatically initiate an insurance claim; responsive to determining that the default user instructions include the identified and selected instruction to automatically initiate an insurance claim, automatically initiate an insurance claim to cover a cost of repair of damage caused by the home event; based at least in part on the video data, determine, by the home event detection and processing system, the cost of repair of damage caused by the home event; and in response to determining that the insurable event deductible is greater than the cost of repair of damage, cancel, by the home event detection and processing system, automatic processing of the insurance claim and transmit a notification to a computing device of the user indicating the insurable event deductible is greater than the cost of repair of damage.

“2. The system of claim 1, wherein automatically initiating the insurance claim further includes processing a first portion of the insurance claim when processing of a full claim is not available.

“3. The system of claim 1, further configured to: determine whether the default user instructions include an identified and selected instruction to initiate repair of damage associated with the home event; and responsive to determining that the default user instructions include the identified and selected instruction to initiate repair of the damage, arrange for repair of the damage including identifying pre-established arrangements to facilitate repair of the damage.

“4. The system of claim 3, further configured to: receive, from at least one additional sensing device monitoring one or more aspects of a second home device, third information different from the first information and the second information, the third information indicating a severity of the damage caused by the home event.

“5. The system of claim 3, wherein arranging for the repair is performed without any additional user input from a user associated with the home device.

“6. The system of claim 3, wherein arranging for repair includes scheduling repair with a service entity.

“7. The system of claim 1, wherein automatically initiating the insurance claim is performed without additional user input from a user associated with the insurance policy.

“8. A method, comprising: receiving, by a home event detection and processing system having a processor and a non-transient memory unit storing computer-executable instructions, via a wireless telecommunication network and in real-time, first information including signals from at least one sensing device monitoring one or more aspects of a home device of a user; analyzing, by the home event detection and processing system, the received signals to determine that a home event has occurred; activating, by the home event detection and processing system, in response to an indication received from the at least one sensing device, at least one video monitoring device configured to capture and transmit video data related to the home device, the at least one video monitoring device being in communication with the at least one sensing device; responsive to activating the at least one video monitoring device, continuously transmitting, via the at least one video monitoring device, video data of the home device; receiving, by the home event detection and processing system from the at least one video monitoring device, the video data of the home device; based on the analyzed received signals and responsive to determining that the home event has occurred, receiving, by the home event detection and processing system, second information different from the first information, the second information being associated with an insurance policy covering the home device; based on the second information, determining, by the home event detection and processing system, an insurable event deductible and determining whether default user instructions identified and selected by a user to designate processes to be performed are available; responsive to determining that the default user instructions are available, determining, by the home event detection and processing system, whether the default user instructions include an identified and selected instruction to automatically initiate an insurance claim; responsive to determining that the default user instructions include the identified and selected instruction to automatically initiate an insurance claim, automatically initiating, by the home event detection and processing system, an insurance claim to cover a cost of repair of damage caused by the home event; based at least in part on the video data, determining, by the home event detection and processing system, the cost of repair of damage caused by the home event; in response to determining that the insurable event deductible is greater than the cost of repair of damage, cancelling, by the home event detection and processing system, automatic processing of the insurance claim, and transmitting a notification to a computing device of the user indicating that the insurable event deductible is greater than the cost of repair of damage.

“9. The method of claim 8, wherein automatically initiating the insurance claim includes processing a first portion of the insurance claim when processing of a full claim is unavailable.

“10. The method of claim 8, further comprising: determining, by the home event detection and processing system, whether the default user instructions include an identified and selected instruction to initiate repair of damage associated with the home event; and responsive to determining that the default user instructions include the identified and selected instruction to initiate repair of the damage, arranging, by the home event detection and processing system, for repair of the damage including identifying pre-established arrangements to facilitate repair of the damage.

“11. The method of claim 10, further comprising: receiving, from at least one additional sensing device monitoring one or more aspects of a second home device, third information different from the first information and the second information, the third information indicating a severity of the damage caused by the home event.

“12. The method of claim 10, wherein arranging for the repair is performed without any additional user input from a user associated with the home device.

“13. The method of claim 10, wherein arranging for repair includes scheduling repair with a service entity.

“14. The method of claim 8, wherein automatically initiating the insurance claim is performed without additional user input from a user associated with the insurance policy.”

URL and more information on this patent, see: Corder, Bryan Keith. Home event detection and processing. U.S. Patent Number 11481847, filed October 29, 2019, and published online on October 25, 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=11481847.PN.&OS=PN/11481847RS=PN/11481847

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