Patent Issued for Method And Process For Transporting Health Information (USPTO 10,832,804)

2020 NOV 23 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- From Alexandria, Virginia, NewsRx journalists report that a patent by the inventors Pletcher, Tim (Mount Pleasant, MI); Livesay, Jeff (Winston-Salem, NC); Mach, Rod (Northville, MI), filed on November 6, 2018, was published online on November 23, 2020.

The patent’s assignee for patent number 10,832,804 is Michigan Health Information Network Shared Services (East Lansing, Michigan, United States).

News editors obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors: “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, `physicianX@direct.hospitalA.org`).

“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.”

As a supplement to the background information on this patent, NewsRx correspondents 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:

“The invention claimed is:

“1. A method for de-identifying and transporting health information, the method comprising: receiving, by a processor, the health information; de-identifying, by the processor, the received health information based on at least one predetermined rule; determining, by the processor, whether the de-identified health information is in a proper form based on a third-party standard; when the de-identified health information is not in the proper form: determining, by the processor, whether the de-identified health information has correctable errors to place the de-identified health information in the proper form; and when the de-identified health information has correctable errors, error-correcting, by the processor, the de-identified health information to place the de-identified health information in the proper form; when the de-identified health information is in the proper form, parsing, by the processor, the de-identified health information to determine an entity to receive the de-identified health information; 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 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 received health information includes an identifier, and the identifier is employed to determine a category in which the received health information is associated with.

“7. The method according to claim 1, further comprising, after parsing the de-identified health information, routing, by the processor, the de-identified health information to the determined entity.

“8. The method according to claim 7, wherein the determined entity is a Health Plan Data Warehouse.

“9. The method according to claim 7, wherein the determined entity is a personal health care provider.

“10. The method according to claim 1, further comprising, when the de-identified health information is not in the proper form and has uncorrectable errors, transmitting, by the processor, a message to a source of the health information.

“11. A system comprising: data processing hardware; and memory hardware in communication with the data processing hardware, the memory hardware storing instructions that when executed on the data processing hardware cause the data processing hardware to perform operations for de-identifying and transporting health information, the operations comprising: receiving the health information; de-identifying the received health information based on at least one predetermined rule; determining whether the de-identified health information is in a proper form based on a third-party standard; when the de-identified health information is not in the proper form: determining whether the de-identified health information has correctable errors to place the de-identified health information in the proper form; and when the health information has correctable errors, error-correcting the received health information to place the de-identified health information in the proper form; when the de-identified health information is in the proper form, parsing the de-identified health information to determine an entity to receive the de-identified health information; and streaming the received health information to a secondary storage device in a manner that complies with Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations.

“12. The system according to claim 11, wherein the received health information is provided via a HISP to HISP communication.

“13. The system according to claim 11, wherein the third-party standard is provided via the Center for Disease Control.

“14. The system according to claim 11, wherein the third-party standard is based on a Logical Observation Identifier Names and Codes standard.

“15. The system according to claim 11, wherein the third-party standard is based on the Systemized Nomenclature of Medicine standard.

“16. The system according to claim 11, wherein the received health information includes an identifier, and the identifier is employed to determine a category in which the received health information is associated with.

“17. The system according to claim 11, wherein the operations further comprise, after parsing the de-identified health information, routing the de-identified health information to the determined entity.

“18. The system according to claim 17, wherein the determined entity is a Health Plan Data Warehouse.

“19. The system according to claim 17, wherein the determined entity is a personal health care provider.

“20. The system according to claim 11, wherein the operations further comprise, when the de-identified health information is not in the proper form and has uncorrectable errors, transmitting a message to a source of the health information.”

For additional information on this patent, see: Pletcher, Tim; Livesay, Jeff; Mach, Rod. Method And Process For Transporting Health Information. U.S. Patent Number 10,832,804, filed November 6, 2018, and published online on November 23, 2020. 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=10,832,804.PN.&OS=PN/10,832,804RS=PN/10,832,804

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