Patent Issued for Method And Process For Transporting Health Information (USPTO 10,311,203)

2019 JUN 18 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- Michigan Health Information Network Shared Services (East Lansing, Michigan, United States) has been issued patent number 10,311,203, according to news reporting originating out of Alexandria, Virginia, by NewsRx editors.

The patent’s inventors are Pletcher, Tim (Mount Pleasant, MI); Livesay, Jeff (Bloomfield, MI); Mach, Rod (Northville, MI).

This patent was filed on September 15, 2014 and was published online on June 17, 2019.

From the background information supplied by the inventors, news correspondents obtained the following quote: “In various industries and organizations, the parties that provide and receive services may communicate with each other. Often times, communication is performed via paper or a non-electronic media. For example, the parties may communicate to each other via mail or fax.

“With the advent of networks, such as the Internet, the parties may communicate with each other through electronic media. For example, one party may communicate information to another party via electronic mail (email). In another example, one party may maintain storage, and allow visiting parties to access the storage via a retrieving protocol, such as a File Transfer Protocol (FTP).

“In certain industries, for example health care, certain precautions may be required when parties share information with each other. Some of these precautions may be mandated or required by federal laws or regulations. In particular, statutes may dictate that when information is passed from one party to another (i.e. a first health care provider to a second health care provider), that certain security and privacy concerns are maintained through protective techniques such as encryption to reduce the likelihood of security breaches and violations of privacy regulations through the disclosure of personal health information (PHI).

“The Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) established the Direct Project which defines a standard protocol for secure messaging by email. The Direct protocol allows participants to send authenticated, secure messages containing encrypted health information to known, trusted recipients over the Internet. In essence, the Direct protocol creates a closed network where only verified and trusted participants may communicate with each other. The Direct protocol employs the use of secure Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) to facilitate the sending of messages from one party to another and requires special digital security certificates for the encryption/decryption.

“Each provider that shares health information may be registered with a Health Information Service Provider (HISP) that is similar to an Internet Service Provider (ISP) but that specializes in Direct secure messaging (secure email). One HISP may service many health care entities. Additionally, several HISPs may be established, and communication between HISPs may be performed employing a closed network messaging protocol, such as Direct. Each health care entity may have a unique identifier granted by one of the HISPs, and use the identifiers to communicate with one another (for example, `[email protected]`).

“An example of communicating with a closed network such as one that employs the Direct protocol is described below. The sender pushes the message from the sender’s HISP to the receiver’s HISP. In this case, the sender may be a general physician who wants to transmit health information to a specialist.

“The sender’s HISP may communicate securely with the receiver’s HISP if the two HISPs have established a trust anchor by exchanging digital security certificates. The sender’s HISP may refer to a routing information directory and push the message to the receiver’s HISP accordingly.

“In the final stage, the receiver’s HISP may receive the encrypted message and provide the message in unencrypted form to the recipient. Thus, through communicating with closed messaging, such as employing the Direct protocol, a first health care provider may securely and electronically transmit health information to an authenticated second health care provider. In this way, due to the messaging occurring electronically, a more efficient delivery of health information is achieved in a secure way.

“The above example describes a situation in which one physician is communicating with another physician. One of ordinary skill in the art may appreciate that the above described messaging may occur with various parties, such as clinics, patients, testing labs, and the like.

“The Direct Project and Direct standard also allows for system endpoints (i.e. an automated sender or an automated receiver) such that the following communications are possible using Direct:

“TABLE-US-00001 Sender Receiver Person Person Person System System Person System System

“The legislated name under the Affordable Care Act for a Direct secure email address is ‘Electronic Service Information’ or ESI. Utilization of Direct by healthcare providers is mandated under the Affordable Care Act for Meaningful Use Stage Two, which under the present Act is required by January 2014. As a result, Direct secure email accounts are becoming a widely available commodity as numerous vendors drive the costs out of operating a Direct HISP.”

Supplementing the background information on this patent, NewsRx reporters also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent: “A method for transforming and transporting health information is disclosed herein. The method includes receiving the health information; transforming the received health information of based on a predetermined rule; validating whether the received health information is in a proper form based on a third-party standard; and parsing the de-identified received health information to determine an entity to receive the de-identified health information.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“We claim:

“1. A method according to a set of instructions stored on a memory of a computing device for transforming and transporting health information, comprising: receiving, by a processor of the computing device, a secured message including the health information from an organization that is involved in health care, the secured message including meta-data; categorizing, based on an identifier included with the received health information and representing a type of service and a domain of one or more entities to whom the received health information should be routed, the received health information into a health information category associated with a type of health information included in the secured message; converting, by the processor, the received health information based on at least one predetermined rule, wherein the conversion comprises: de-identifying the received health information, extracting data including the meta-data from the health information to determine the one or more entities to whom the health information should be routed, confirming that the health information conforms to a third-party standard, wherein the confirming further comprises error-correcting the received health information, and converting the data to a proper, normalized, and conformant format based on the third-party standard or other third-party standards; routing, by the processor, the de-identified health information to the determined one or more entities; and streaming, by the processor, the received health information to a secondary storage device in a manner that complies with Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations.

“2. The method according to claim 1, wherein the received health information is provided via a Health Information Service Provider (HISP) to HISP communication.

“3. The method according to claim 1, wherein the third-party standard is provided via the Center for Disease Control.

“4. The method according to claim 1, wherein the third-party standard is based on a Logical Observation Identifier Names and Codes standard.

“5. The method according to claim 1, wherein the third-party standard is based on the Systemized Nomenclature of Medicine standard.

“6. The method according to claim 1, wherein the determined one or more entities comprises a Health Plan Data Warehouse.

“7. The method according to claim 1, wherein the determined one or more entities comprises a personal health care provider.

“8. A non-transitory computer readable medium having instructions stored thereon that, upon execution by a computing device, cause the computing device to perform operations, wherein the instructions comprise: instructions to receive a secured message including the health information from an organization that is involved in health care, the secured message including meta-data; instructions to categorize, based on an identifier included with the received health information and representing a type of service and a domain of one or more entities to whom the received health information should be routed, the received health information into a health information category associated with a type of health information included in the secured message; instructions to convert the received health information based on at least one predetermined rule, wherein the conversion comprises: de-identifying the received health information, extracting data including the meta-data from the health information to determine one or more entities to whom the health information should be routed, confirming that the health information conforms to a third-party standard, wherein the confirming further comprises error-correcting the received health information, and converting the data to a proper, normalized, and conformant format based on the third-party standard or other third-party standards; instructions to route the de-identified health information to the determined one or more entities; and instructions to stream the received health information to a secondary storage device in a manner that complies with Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations.

“9. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 8, wherein the health information comprises one or more records, and wherein the extracting the data to determine the one or more entities to whom the health information should be routed further comprises: instructions to identify a type of the one or more records based on an identifier of the one or more records, wherein the one or more entities to whom the health information should be routed is determined based on the identifier.

“10. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 8, wherein the health information comprises a message with a subject entry, and the one or more entities to whom the health information should be routed is determined based on the subject entry.

“11. The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 8, wherein the health information comprises an attachment, and the one or more entities to whom the health information should be routed is determined based on the attachment.

“12. An apparatus comprising: a memory; a processor coupled to the memory; and a first set of instructions stored on the memory and configured to be executed by the processor, wherein the processor is configured to: receive a secured message including the health information from an organization that is involved in health care, the secured message including meta-data; categorize, based on an identifier included with the received health information and representing a type of service and a domain of one or more entities to whom the received health information should be routed, the received health information into a health information category associated with a type of health information included in the secured message; convert the received health information based on at least one predetermined rule, wherein to convert the processor is further configured to: de-identify the received health information, extract data including the meta-data from the health information to determine one or more entities to whom the health information should be routed, confirm that the health information conforms to a third-party standard, wherein confirming further comprises error-correcting the received health information, and convert the data to a proper, normalized, and conformant format based on the third-party standard or other third-party standards; route the de-identified health information to the determined one or more entities; and stream the received health information to a secondary storage device in a manner that complies with Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations.

“13. The apparatus of claim 12, wherein the validation further comprises: in response to a determination of an addressable error in the health information, the processor is further configured to correct the addressable error in the health information; and in response to determination of a non-addressable error in the health information, the processor is further configured to transmit an error notification back to the health information’s source.

“14. The apparatus of claim 12, wherein the health information is received from a sender, and data related to the sender is extracted to determine the one or more entities to whom the de-identified health information should be routed.

“15. The apparatus of claim 14, wherein the data related to the sender is an e-mail or secure message address.

“16. The apparatus of claim 12, wherein the health information received is received or routed through an electronic e-mail or secure messaging address, and the one or more entities to whom the health information should be routed is determined based on the electronic e-mail or secure messaging address.”

For the URL and additional information on this patent, see: Pletcher, Tim; Livesay, Jeff; Mach, Rod. Method And Process For Transporting Health Information. U.S. Patent Number 10,311,203, filed September 15, 2014, and published online on June 17, 2019. 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=10,311,203.PN.&OS=PN/10,311,203RS=PN/10,311,203

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