Patent Issued for Systems and methods for a de-identified medical and healthcare data marketplace (USPTO 11593522): Medicom Technologies Inc.

2023 MAR 22 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- A patent by the inventors Benitz, Malcolm (Raleigh, NC, US), Goldstein, Brent (Raleigh, NC, US), Rosenberg, Michael (Raleigh, NC, US), Suttles, Jason (Raleigh, NC, US), Woodlief, Chris (Raleigh, NC, US), filed on July 18, 2022, was published online on February 28, 2023, according to news reporting originating from Alexandria, Virginia, by NewsRx correspondents.

Patent number 11593522 is assigned to Medicom Technologies Inc. (Raleigh, North Carolina, United States).

The following quote was obtained by the news editors from the background information supplied by the inventors:

“Field of the Invention

“The present invention relates, in general, to systems and methods for protecting patient privacy when health care and medical information is shared between various entities and, in particular, to systems and methods that implement a multi-stage sanitizing routine for de-identifying protected health information (PHI) from medical and healthcare data, such as, for example, medical reports and diagnostic images, in order to ensure patient privacy, while preserving the ability for sanitized medical reports and diagnostic images to be re-identified.

“Description of Related Art

“The ease with which electronic data can be transmitted, together with the increasing use of health care, medical, and patient information (collectively, “medical information”) for research purposes, has raised concerns about patient confidentiality and institutional liability, as well as concerns surrounding the protection of patient privacy when such medical information is transmitted between various entities, such as, for example, a medical provider and a research institution.

“To maintain patient privacy in the context of research and various third-party uses, it must be ensured that any medical information used in aggregate is not associated with any specific patient or individual, and that only authorized entities based on a patient’s informed consent have access to such medical data.

“Such patient privacy can be maintained by disclosing only specific portions of the medical information through de-identification processes, where portions of the medical information that may be classified as personally identifiable information (PII). PII can be any data that could potentially identify a specific patient or individual. Sensitive PII is information which, when disclosed, could result in harm to an individual whose privacy has been breached. Sensitive PII can include biometric information, medical information, personally identifiable financial information, and unique identifiers such as passport or Social Security numbers. PHI and PII is typically removed, deleted, masked, or replaced with non-identifiable information through such conventional de-identification processes.

“In the United States, standards such as Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) have resulted in federal regulations that place strict requirements on the archiving and disclosure of medical information. For example, in accordance with HIPAA, federal regulations have been enacted that require healthcare organizations, physicians, and entities having access to such medical information to ensure the protection, privacy and security of the patient information, which can include PHI and PII. In particular, the “Privacy Rule” of HIPAA provides federal privacy regulations that set forth requirements for confidentiality and privacy policies and procedures, consents, authorizations and notices, which must be adopted in order to maintain, use, or disclose PHI and PII in the course of a patient’s treatment, as well as other business functions or other activities.

“The HIPAA Privacy Rule allows for entities to de-identify PHI for certain purposes so that medical information may be used and disclosed freely, without being subject to the protections afforded by the Privacy Rule. The term “de-identified data” as used by HIPAA refers to medical information from which all information, data and tags that could reasonably be used to identify the patient has been removed (such as, for example, their name, address, social security number, date of birth, contact information, and the like).

“Conventional methods for de-identifying medical data include simply stripping all information considered to be PHI or PII from a medical record that can be used to determine the identity of a patient, or replacing such information with something else (such as, for example, replacing the actual patient name with the string “name”). Although the medical records are de-identified with such conventional methods, there remains no mechanism by which PHI or PII can be recovered for re-identification purposes, if required.

“In addition, various methods of de-identification generally of documents and metadata fields include built-in code to remove portions marked for de-identification, or utilize template-based approaches to redact information from documents. Methods of de-identification have been used for text documents, structured metadata fields such as in Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) metadata, but de-identification of visual media data when the medical information is burned into, or embedded inside the media, can be difficult and time consuming.

“Therefore, there is a need for a reliable system and method to ensure complete de-sanitization of both diagnostic images and associated medical reports containing text and burned in medical information, whereby the sanitized PHI and PII can be recovered for re-identification purposes.”

In addition to the background information obtained for this patent, NewsRx journalists also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent: “In one embodiment, the invention relates to a system for providing a medical data marketplace, the system comprising: a database storing a plurality of de-identified medical data sets, wherein each de-identified medical data set is owned by a different data owner; a server coupled to the database; and a computer-readable storage medium operably connected to a processor coupled to the server, the computer-readable storage medium containing programming instructions that, when executed, cause the processor to: generate an interface that allows a customer to submit a search request that includes at least one criteria, receive the search request from the interface, query the database using the criteria to retrieve at least one matching medical data set from the plurality of de-identified medical data sets, display the at least one matching medical data set on the interface, and facilitate a financial transaction related to the at least one matching medical data set between a respective data owner and the customer.

“In another embodiment, the invention relates to a system for providing a medical data marketplace, the system comprising: a database storing a plurality of diagnostic image sets, wherein each diagnostic image set is owned by a different data owner; a server coupled to the database; and a computer-readable storage medium operably connected to a processor coupled to the server, the computer-readable storage medium containing programming instructions that, when executed, cause the processor to: perform a de-identification process on each of the plurality of diagnostic image sets to generate a plurality of de-identified diagnostic image sets, generate an interface that allows a customer to submit a search request that includes at least one criteria, receive the search request from the interface, query the database using the criteria to retrieve at least one matching diagnostic image set from the plurality of de-identified diagnostic image sets, display the at least one matching diagnostic image set on the interface, and facilitate a financial transaction related to the at least one matching diagnostic image set between a respective data owner and the customer.

“In another embodiment, the invention relates to a system for providing a medical data marketplace, the system comprising: a database storing a plurality of medical data sets, wherein each medical data set is owned by a different data owner; a server coupled to the database; and a computer-readable storage medium operably connected to a processor coupled to the server, the computer-readable storage medium containing programming instructions that, when executed, cause the processor to: perform a de-identification process on each of the plurality of medical data sets to generate a plurality of de-identified medical data sets, generate an interface that allows a customer to submit a search request that includes at least one criteria; receive the search request from the interface, query the database using the criteria to retrieve at least one matching medical data set from the plurality of de-identified medical data sets, display the at least one matching medical data set on the interface, and facilitate a financial transaction related to the at least one matching medical data set between a respective data owner and the customer.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A system for providing a medical data marketplace, the system comprising: a database storing a plurality of de-identified medical data sets, wherein each de-identified medical data set is owned by a different data owner; a server coupled to the database; and a computer-readable storage medium operably connected to a processor coupled to the server, the computer-readable storage medium containing programming instructions that, when executed, cause the processor to: generate an interface that allows a customer to submit a search request that includes at least one criteria, wherein the criteria is selected from a group consisting of a modality type, an equipment manufacturer, a body part, a study description, a protocol name, a requested procedure description, a scheduled procedure step description, and a keyword, receive the search request from the interface, query the database using the criteria to retrieve at least one matching medical data set from the plurality of de-identified medical data sets, display the at least one matching medical data set on the interface, and facilitate a financial transaction related to the at least one matching medical data set between a respective data owner and the customer.

“2. The system of claim 1, wherein the at least one matching medical data set is not eligible for re-identification after the financial transaction is conducted.

“3. The system of claim 1, wherein the criteria is a study date or a study date range.

“4. The system of claim 1, wherein the criteria is a geographic criteria or a demographic criteria.

“5. The system of claim 1, wherein the financial transaction is a sale of the at least one matching medical data set.

“6. The system of claim 1, wherein the financial transaction is a license to the at least one matching medical data set.

“7. The system of claim 1, wherein the server and the respective data owner share proceeds from the financial transaction.

“8. The system of claim 1, wherein the server receives a membership fee from the customer.

“9. The system of claim 1, wherein each of the plurality of medical data sets include a medical report and at least one diagnostic image.

“10. A system for providing a medical data marketplace, the system comprising: a database storing a plurality of diagnostic image sets, wherein each diagnostic image set is owned by a different data owner; a server coupled to the database; and a computer-readable storage medium operably connected to a processor coupled to the server, the computer-readable storage medium containing programming instructions that, when executed, cause the processor to: perform a de-identification process on each of the plurality of diagnostic image sets to generate a plurality of de-identified diagnostic image sets, generate an interface that allows a customer to submit a search request that includes at least one criteria, wherein the criteria is selected from a group consisting of a modality type, an equipment manufacturer, a body part, a study description, a protocol name, a requested procedure description, a scheduled procedure step description, and a keyword, receive the search request from the interface, query the database using the criteria to retrieve at least one matching diagnostic image set from the plurality of de-identified diagnostic image sets, display the at least one matching diagnostic image set on the interface, and facilitate a financial transaction related to the at least one matching diagnostic image set between a respective data owner and the customer.

“11. The system of claim 10, wherein the at least one matching diagnostic image set is not eligible for re-identification after the financial transaction is conducted.

“12. The system of claim 10, wherein the criteria is a study date or a study date range.

“13. The system of claim 10, wherein the criteria is a geographic criteria or a demographic criteria.

“14. The system of claim 10, wherein the financial transaction is a sale of the at least one matching diagnostic image set.

“15. The system of claim 10, wherein the financial transaction is a licensing of the at least one matching diagnostic image set.

“16. The system of claim 10, wherein the server receives a listing fee from each of the different data owners.

“17. The system of claim 10, wherein at least one of the server and the respective data owner share proceeds from the financial transaction.

“18. A system for providing a medical data marketplace, the system comprising: a database storing a plurality of medical data sets, wherein each medical data set is owned by a different data owner; a server coupled to the database; and a computer-readable storage medium operably connected to a processor coupled to the server, the computer-readable storage medium containing programming instructions that, when executed, cause the processor to: perform a de-identification process on each of the plurality of medical data sets to generate a plurality of de-identified medical data sets, generate an interface that allows a customer to submit a search request that includes at least one criteria, wherein the criteria is selected from a group consisting of a modality type, an equipment manufacturer, a body part, a study description, a protocol name, a requested procedure description, a scheduled procedure step description, and a keyword, receive the search request from the interface, query the database using the criteria to retrieve at least one matching medical data set from the plurality of de-identified medical data sets, display the at least one matching medical data set on the interface, and facilitate a financial transaction related to the at least one matching medical data set between a respective data owner and the customer.

“19. The system of claim 18, wherein the de-identification process includes the steps of: retrieving, by the server, a medical image from a medical data set from the plurality of medical data sets; determining, by the server, a modality associated with the medical image; retrieving, by the server, a de-identification profile for the modality, wherein the de-identification profile specifies at least one area of the medical image that contains patient information; and applying, by a sanitizing engine coupled to the server, a blackout zone over the area of the medical image specified in the de-identification profile, wherein the patient information within the blackout zone is deleted by the sanitizing engine.

“20. The system of claim 19, wherein the de-identification process further includes the steps of: detecting, by the sanitizing engine, a boundary for a diagnostic portion of the medical image if no characters are detected in the area after the blackout zone has been applied; detecting, by the sanitizing engine, if non-black pixels are present outside of the boundary for the diagnostic portion; and performing a first operation by the sanitizing engine to convert any non-black pixels detected outside of the boundary for the diagnostic portion to black pixels, or performing a second operation by the sanitizing engine to encapsulate the medical image into a DICOM format if non-black pixels are not detected outside of the boundary for the diagnostic portion.”

URL and more information on this patent, see: Benitz, Malcolm. Systems and methods for a de-identified medical and healthcare data marketplace. U.S. Patent Number 11593522, filed July 18, 2022, and published online on February 28, 2023. Patent URL (for desktop use only): https://ppubs.uspto.gov/pubwebapp/external.html?q=(11593522)&db=USPAT&type=ids

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