Patent Issued for System, method, and apparatus for virtualizing digital assistants (USPTO 11337061): Ways Investments LLC

2022 JUN 03 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- From Alexandria, Virginia, NewsRx journalists report that a patent by the inventors Gray, Mark Edward (Lakewod Ranch, FL, US), filed on November 6, 2020, was published online on May 17, 2022.

The patent’s assignee for patent number 11337061 is Ways Investments LLC (Sarasota, Florida, United States).

News editors obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors: “In recent years, many companies have introduced devices that accept voice commands and take actions based upon those voice commands. Some such devices operate on smart phones, but lately, many companies are producing what is known a digital assistant or “smart speakers” which are typically stand-alone devices that are connected to a network (e.g. the Internet). These digital assistants listen for voice commands, recognize and analyze the voice commands and act on those voice commands through a network. Often, such devices utilize a keyword to initiate action. For example, one device from Amazon® is Alexa®. In order to issue a command to this device, the user must first say the keyword, “Alexa”, or other optional Wake words, followed by the command. For example, “Alexa, what is the weather in Aruba today?” This keyword is important so the digital assistant does not overhear and interpret normal conversations and act on what is heard. For example, if you were on the phone and said to the other party, “did you turn off the lights,” without this keyword, the digital assistant might just turn off the lights in your house.

“There are many uses for these digital assistants such as, reading/answering email or texts, operating connected appliances within the home, controlling the playing of music, looking up information/trivia, etc.

“Unrelated to these digital assistants are medical emergencies, predicaments, or medical alerts. Many people of all ages, though concentrated on those in their golden years, run into situations in which they need help, for example, after a fall, getting stuck in a home elevator, or the onslaught of a serious medical condition such as a stroke or heart attack. If another person is in the same home or nearby, the person having the medical emergency or other hazard can shout to get that person’s attention, but what about those who are alone, perhaps because others that live with them are out of the home, or they live alone. Shouting will not solicit help.

“A medical alarm is an alarm system designed to signal the presence of such an event that requires urgent attention and, if needed, to summon emergency medical personnel. Other terms for a medical alarm are Personal Emergency Response System (“PERS”) or medical alert. Elderly people and disabled people who live alone commonly use/require medical alarms.

“Typical medical alarm systems in use today have a wireless pendant or transmitter that is activated after an event has occurred. When the transmitter is activated, a signal is transmitted and relayed to an alarm monitoring company’s central station. The central station is staffed with trained personnel to assess the situation and contact other emergency agency or other programmed phone numbers. In some cases, personnel are dispatched to the site where the alarm was activated.

“Such medical alarm systems work well when properly installed, when the batteries have sufficient charge and when the user remembers or agrees to wear them. However, since traditional medical alarm systems are, at least in part, user operated, there are problematic drawbacks. For example, if a user gets up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom without their device, and falls or becomes ill and cannot reach their emergency device, or telephone; then they cannot get the emergency help they need, rendering the medical alert useless. Often, users have complications during the night, when trying to reach the bathroom. Often such users are not in possession of their medical alert device.

“Furthermore, such medical alarm systems rely on user operations that requires users to change their behavior, making current medical alarm systems inherently susceptible to users’ personal limitations, proclivities, and flaws-putting reliance on the user to remember to recharge the battery and consistently wear a pendant, wrist band, panic button, or other device for the entire day and night. Some users, however, do not want to wear the alarm pendant or wrist band because of aesthetics and/or inconvenience and/or privacy, rendering the device useless when needed. Also, some users forget to don or wear the device and the device may not be within reach when they need it most. Additionally, some users forget to charge the device regularly and the device simply shuts down and ceases to operate until recharged. In fact, approximately 30% of all users of such devices cancel medical alert service annually, possibly due to the fact that they no longer wear or use the device, despite the fact that the user is still in need of a medical monitoring. In an independent research study, 83% of subscribers to medical alert services did not have their medical alert wearable device within reach in a slip and fall at home and resulted in five (5) minutes or longer stranded on the floor and unable to get up without assistance.

“Additionally, as of this writing, both Amazon® Alexa® and Google Assistant® and other digital personal assistants (DPA) are not permitted to dial 911 by operating system programming. If a voice command is given to “Call for Police,” “Call for a Doctor,” “Call for an Ambulance,” fire or other emergency is given, those commands are blocked by the digital personal assistant, by design. One of the issues with issuing calls directly to 911 is that greater than 90% of all issued alarms from electronic alarm systems in the United States are deemed false alarms. This is a significant problem in the industry, and thus, any types of digital personal assistants are currently disabled form making unverified calls to 911.

“Privacy is also of the utmost importance. In the United States, there is a set of laws commonly called HIPAA, which stands for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. HIPAA provides for stiff penalties for offenses in which medical personnel divulge any private medical information regarding a patient. Therefore, anyone involved with providing any part of a medical alarm system must be thoroughly trained and monitored to treat any information confidentially, as release of any health-related information is a possible violation of the law related to HIPAA.

“These digital assistants are perfect for summoning help, especially as described in the parent applications utilizing a server and call center for connecting an agent to determine the reason for help and dispatching the proper type of help, if any is needed, depending upon the nature of the call for help. Further, having these digital assistants within the users’ living quarters opens other features of the digital assistants for the users. For example, it is fully anticipated that the users be able to listen to music, ask questions like “keyword-what is the weather,” etc. It is also anticipated that the digital assistants be used in other medical-related transactions such as tele-medicine and communicating with medical professionals. For example, the user might say “keyword-connect me with doctor Smith.” In using a digital assistant in such a way, some of the information that transpires between the digital assistant and the other end is available, for example, to workers and agents of the company providing the digital assistant service. Therefore, providers are reluctant to sell or advertise digital assistants for such uses as this service would not be HIPPA compliant.

“What is needed is a system that provides voice communication and connectivity between a digital assistant and a called party (e.g. health care provider) providing privacy for Protected Medical Information (“PHI”) by omitting identification information that might correlate to the user of the digital assistant.”

As a supplement to the background information on this patent, NewsRx correspondents also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent: “The present invention relates to digital assistants and communications with medical organizations, either by voice or by data. More particularly, the digital assistants are used to connect to a medical service or provider to interact and share medical data that, in some embodiments, includes Protected Medical Information (“PHI”).

“In one embodiment, a system for anonymous communications from a user to a called party is disclosed. The system includes a digital assistant that is preprogrammed with account information and a skill for recognizing a preprogrammed specific utterance. The digital assistant is also configured with a dedicated phone number that is not assigned to the user. An access point (e.g. a wireless access point) is provided and the digital assistant is configured to wirelessly communicate with the wireless access point as the wireless access point is connected to the Internet such that, the digital assistant is enabled to communicate with the Internet through the wireless access point. When the digital assistant recognizing the specific utterance followed by an indication of the called party, the digital assistant initiates a voice connection to the called party and when the called party receives caller-id data regarding the voice connection, the caller-id data comprises the dedicated phone number. After accepting the voice connection, the user is in audio communication with the called party.

“In another embodiment, a method for providing anonymous communications from a user to a called party includes obtaining a dedicated phone number and creating a user account for the user and assigning the dedicated phone number to the user account. A provider account is created for a digital assistant using the dedicated phone number and the digital assistant is preprogrammed with the user account. The digital assistant is also preprogrammed with a skill for recognizing a specific utterance (e.g. “Call”). Connectivity is provided between the digital assistant and the Internet, for example, using a wireless access point. The digital assistant listens for the specific utterance and, upon recognizing the specific utterance followed by an identification of the called party, the digital assistant initiates a voice call through the Internet to the called party.

“In another embodiment, a system for providing anonymous communications from a user to a called party includes a dedicated phone number that is obtained for the user. A provider account is created for a digital assistant using the dedicated phone number to protect the privacy of the user. An account for the user is created in the system for providing help, the account having information regarding the user and the account having the dedicated phone number. The digital assistant is preprogrammed with a skill recognizing a specific utterance and the digital assistant is pre-configured to connect to the Internet (e.g. through a wireless network adapter). After the specific utterance followed by an identification of the called party is detected by the digital assistant, the digital assistant initiates a voice call to the called party. Without knowledge of the dedicated phone number, any voice data intercepted from the voice call by an eavesdropper is anonymous and does not correlate to the user.

“To protect such Protected Medical Information (“PHI”), each digital assistant is virtualized in such a way that any individual or system gaining access to any of the data/voice sent or received by the digital assistant isn’t associated with the user of the digital assistant. In other words, from the perspective of the individual or system that has gained access to this data, it is simply random data related to somebody, but the individual or system has no way to correlate the date/voice to any one person. For example, if an eavesdropper hears “your diagnosis is cancer,” the eavesdropper only knows that somebody has just been given a diagnosis of cancer, but there is no way for the eavesdropper to know who has this diagnosis and, therefore, without being able to associate the captured data with an individual, privacy is maintained.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A system for anonymous communications from a user to a called party, the system comprising: a digital assistant, the digital assistant is preprogrammed with account information and a skill for recognizing a preprogrammed specific utterance, the digital assistant configured with a dedicated phone number that is not assigned to the user; a wireless access point, the digital assistant configured to wirelessly communicate with the wireless access point, the wireless access point connected to the Internet such that, the digital assistant is enabled to communicate with the Internet through the wireless access point; whereas when the digital assistant recognizing the specific utterance followed by an indication of the called party, the digital assistant initiates a voice connection to the called party through the Internet, wherein the voice connection is initiated using the dedicated phone number which is not associated with an identity of the user; whereas when the called party receives caller-id data regarding the voice connection, the caller-id data comprises the dedicated phone number; and whereas after accepting the voice connection, the user is in audio communication with the called party.

“2. The system of claim 1, whereas, the dedicated phone number is provided to the called party during a registration process of the called party.

“3. The system of claim 2, whereas, knowing the dedicated phone number, the called party is enabled to correlate the dedicated phone number to a data record of the user, thereby the called party knows an identity of the user.

“4. The system of claim 2, wherein the called party is a health care provider.

“5. A method for providing anonymous communications from a user to a called party, the method comprising: obtaining a dedicated phone number; creating a user account for the user and assigning the dedicated phone number to the user account; creating a provider account for a digital assistant using the dedicated phone number; preprogrammed the digital assistant with the user account; preprogramming the digital assistant with a skill for recognizing a specific utterance; providing a connectivity between the digital assistant and an Internet; the digital assistant listening for the specific utterance and, upon recognizing the specific utterance, followed by an identification of the called party, the digital assistant initiating a voice call through the Internet to the called party, wherein the initiating of the voice call uses the dedicated phone number which is not associated with an identity of the user.

“6. The method of claim 5, wherein the step of providing the connectivity comprises providing a mobile hotspot that is assigned the dedicated phone number.

“7. The method of claim 5, wherein the dedicated phone number is not assigned to the user.

“8. The method of claim 5, wherein during initiating the voice call through the Internet to the called party, caller-id information is provided to the called party and the caller-id information comprises the dedicated phone number.

“9. The method of claim 8, further comprising before the step of initiating the voice call through the Internet, the steps of: providing the dedicated phone number to the called party; and the called party storing the dedicated phone number in a data record associated with the user.

“10. The method of claim 9, further comprising after the step of initiating the voice call through the Internet, the steps of: the called party receiving the caller-id; and the called party finding the data record associated with the caller-id, thereby identifying the user.

“11. The method of claim 10, wherein the called party is a health care provider and the data record comprises a medical record of the user.

“12. The method of claim 5, further comprising creating a dedicated email address for use during the step of preprogrammed the digital assistant with the user account, the email address unassociated with the user.

“13. A system for providing anonymous communications from a user to a called party, the system comprising: a dedicated phone number is obtained for the user and the dedicated phone number is not directly associated to an identity of the user to protect privacy of the user; a provider account created using the dedicated phone number to protect the privacy of the user; an account for the user created in the system for providing help, the account having information regarding the user and the account having the dedicated phone number; a digital assistant preprogrammed with a skill recognizing a specific utterance and the digital assistant is pre-configured to connect to an Internet; whereas after the specific utterance followed by an identification of the called party is detected by the digital assistant, the digital assistant initiates a voice call through the Internet to the called party, wherein the voice connection is initiated using the dedicated phone number which is not associated with an identity of the user.

“14. The system of claim 13, further comprising a mobile hotspot, the mobile hotspot assigned the dedicated phone number and the mobile hotspot providing connectivity between the digital assistant and the Internet.

“15. The system of claim 13, wherein when voice data transmitted over the voice call is intercepted by the eavesdropper, the eavesdropper is precluded from identifying the user by way of the dedicated phone number that is not assigned to the user.

“16. The system of claim 13, whereas, the dedicated phone number is provided to the called party during a registration process of the called party.

“17. The system of claim 16, whereas, knowing the dedicated phone number, the called party is enabled to correlate the dedicated phone number to a data record of the user, thereby the called party knows an identity of the user.

“18. The system of claim 16, wherein the called party is a health care provider.

“19. The system of claim 16, wherein the called party is enabled to call the user using the dedicated phone number.”

For additional information on this patent, see: Gray, Mark Edward. System, method, and apparatus for virtualizing digital assistants. U.S. Patent Number 11337061, filed November 6, 2020, and published online on May 17, 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=11337061.PN.&OS=PN/11337061RS=PN/11337061

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