Patent Issued for Systems And Methods For Status Data Graphical Interface (USPTO 10,621,669)

2020 APR 24 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- A patent by the inventors Albert, Victoria F. (Guilford, CT); Shukla, Susmita (Glastonbury, CT), filed on June 16, 2017, was published online on April 27, 2020, according to news reporting originating from Alexandria, Virginia, by NewsRx correspondents.

Patent number 10,621,669 is assigned to Hartford Fire Insurance Company (Hartford, Connecticut, United States).

The following quote was obtained by the news editors from the background information supplied by the inventors: “Claim processing is complex and time-consuming. While claims are pending, customers often time contact their insurance company to check on the status of the pending claims. Such a process is inefficient and inconvenient. To solve this problem, some insurance companies send claim status updates in emails to their customers. However, there does not exist a system that provides automated real-time claim status update to a customer upon request. Accordingly, there exists a need for an intuitive and interactive graphical user interface system to allow customers to check a claim status in real-time. Additionally, there exists another need to integrate the existing data management, analysis and reporting tools and/or services of an insurance company to automate such a graphical user interface.”

In addition to the background information obtained for this patent, NewsRx journalists also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent: “Systems and methods for a graphical user interface for depicting status of a claim are provided. In particular, the system includes a database and a server. The database stores claim data for a plurality of claims. The stored claim data includes a claim workflow associated with each of the plurality of claims. The server can communicate with the database to receive and store data to and from the database. The server can receive a user request to check the status of the insurance claim. In response to receiving the request, the server determines status data of the claim based on claim data stored in the database. The server can also store the determined status data in the database. Finally, the server can output the status data to a graphical user interface, which depicts a graphical representation of the status data.

“In one embodiment, the server receives data for the claim workflow, which defines processing steps associated with processing the claim. The graphical representation includes a timeline, which corresponds to the claim workflow. The graphical representation also includes descriptions of processing steps associated with the workflow. To illustrate the progress or status of the claim, the graphical representation can also include a progress bar indicative of the status of the claim.

“In another embodiment, the server receives a second user request to access additional claim status data. The request includes an indication to the server that the user requests to obtain additional status data associated with a particular processing step. In response to receiving the second request, the server retrieves additional claim data associated with the second request and determines the additional status data, which corresponds to the status of a plurality of substeps associated with the particular processing step. The server can output data sufficient to display, via the graphical user interface, graphical representations of additional timelines indicating the substeps associated with at least one of a plurality of processing steps. The server can also alter the timeline based on the type of coverage implicated by the claim and the nature of a loss associated with the claim. In an alternative embodiment, the second user request received by the server is a request to upload or download data to or from the server.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“What is claimed is:

“1. A computer system, comprising: a coverage database storing coverage data corresponding to a plurality of coverage policies; a claim database storing claim processing data for a plurality of coverage claims; and claim workflow data corresponding to a claim workflow, the claim workflow defining a series of steps associated with processing of coverage claims, and a temporal ordering of the series of steps; an application server configured to access coverage data in the coverage database, access the claim processing data in the claim database, and generate claim status data; a web server configured to: receive login data from a user computing device of a user to access a coverage policy web page corresponding to the user’s coverage policy; generate web page source code for rendering of the coverage policy web page to be executed by a web browser, the coverage policy web page including a selectable option to request a status of a claim corresponding to the user’s coverage policy; responsive to receipt of selection of the request for the status of the claim: forward the request for the status of the claim to the application server; receive from the application server claim status data; generate status source code for rendering a graphical depiction of the claim status data, including: steps source code to render a first graphical depiction of each of the series of steps of the claim workflow, including each of the series of steps which have been completed and each of the series of steps which have not been completed, each of the series of steps arranged in accordance with the temporal ordering of the series of steps; and dynamic animation function source code to render a second graphical depiction of a dynamic representation element distinct from the first graphical depiction of each of the series of steps of the claim workflow, the dynamic representation element comprising a unitary graphical element which dynamically varies in size to correspond to all of the series of steps of the claim workflow that have been completed; transmit the status source code to the web browser of the user computing device to cause the web browser to render the first graphical depiction of each of the series of steps of the claim workflow and to render the second graphical depiction of the dynamic representation element dynamically adapted to correspond to all of the series of steps of the claim workflow that have been completed.

“2. The computer system of claim 1, wherein the application server is further configured to query the claim database to determine whether one or more of the series of steps were completed since a last login of the user; and responsive to a determination that one or more of the series of steps were completed since the last login of the user, forward data indicative of changed claim status data to the web server to update the animation function source code; and wherein the web server is configured to send the updated animation function source code to the user computing device to cause the web browser running on the user computing device to render the dynamic representation element dynamically adapted to correspond to the changed claim status data.

“3. The computer system of claim 1, wherein the web server is further configured to generate detail source code to: define at least one of a hover function or a click function corresponding to one or more steps of the series of steps; and responsive to receipt, from the web browser on the user computing device, of invocation of the at least one of the hover function and the click function for a selected one of the series of steps, render a third graphical depiction of a series of substeps associated with the selected one of the series of steps.

“4. The computer system of claim 1, wherein the web server is further configured to generate detail source code to: define at least one of a hover function or a click function corresponding to one or more steps of the series of steps for selecting one of (i) detailed substeps corresponding to one of the series of steps, and (ii) a document download or upload corresponding to the one of the series of steps; responsive to receipt, from the web browser of the user computing device, of an invocation of the at least one of the hover function and the click function for a selected one of the series of steps, determine whether the invocation corresponds to a request for additional information corresponding to the selected one of the series of steps or a request for the document download or upload for the selected one of the series of steps; responsive to a determination that the invocation corresponds to the request for additional information corresponding to the selected one of the steps, render a third graphical depiction of a series of substeps associated with the selected one of the series of steps; and responsive to a determination that the invocation corresponds to the document download or upload request for the selected one of the series of steps, execute a function that corresponds to the document download or upload request.

“5. The computer system of claim 4, wherein the web server is further configured to generate documents source code to render a fourth graphical depiction including a list of documents needed for completion of a documents received step of the series of steps of the claim workflow.

“6. The computer system of claim 1, wherein the dynamic animation function source code causes the dynamic representation element to be displayed by the web browser as a progress bar.

“7. The computer system of claim 1, wherein the user computing device comprises a mobile phone.

“8. The computer system of claim 7, wherein the web browser comprises a claim status tracker application executing on the mobile phone.

“9. A computer-implemented method, comprising: storing, in a claim database stored on one or more data storage devices, (i) claim processing data for a plurality of coverage claims, and (ii) claim workflow data corresponding to a claim workflow, the claim workflow defining a series of steps associated with processing of coverage claims; receiving, by a web server communicatively coupled to a user computing device of a user, user login data to access a coverage policy web page corresponding to a coverage policy of the user, coverage data corresponding to the coverage policy being stored in coverage database stored on a one or more data storage devices; generating, by the web server, web page source code for rendering of the coverage policy web page to be executed by a browser, said coverage policy web page including a selectable option to request a status of a claim corresponding to the user’s coverage policy; responsive to receipt, by the web server, of a selection of the request for the status of the claim: forwarding, by the web server, the request for the status of the claim to an application server; generating, by the application server accessing the coverage data in the coverage database and accessing the claim processing data in the claim database, the claim status data; receiving, by the web server from the application server, the claim status data; generating, by the web server, status source code for rendering a graphical depiction of the claim status data, including: steps source code for rendering a first graphical depiction of each of the series of steps of the claim workflow, including each of the series of steps which have been completed and each of the series of steps which have not been completed, each of the series of steps arranged in accordance with a temporal ordering of the series of steps; and dynamic animation function source code for rendering a second graphical depiction of a dynamic representation element distinct from the first graphical depiction of each of the series of steps of the claim workflow, the dynamic representation element comprising a unitary graphical element which dynamically varies in size to correspond to all of the series of steps of the claim workflow that have been completed; transmitting the status source code, by the web server to the web browser of a user computing device, causing the web browser to render the first graphical depiction of each of the series of steps of the claim workflow and to render the second graphical depiction of the dynamic representation element dynamically adapted to correspond to all of the series of steps of the claim workflow that have been completed.

“10. The computer-implemented method of claim 9, further comprising: querying the claim database by the application server to determine whether one or more of the series of steps were completed since a last login of the user; and responsive to a determination that one or more of the series of steps were completed since the last login of the user, forwarding data indicative of changed claim status data to the web server to update the animation function source code; and sending, by the web server, the updated animation function source code to the user computing device to cause the web browser running on the user computing device to render the dynamic representation element dynamically adapted to correspond to the changed claim status data.

“11. The computer-implemented method of claim 9, further comprising: generating, by the web server, source code to define at least one of a hover function or a click function corresponding to one or more steps of the series of steps; and responsive to receipt, from the web browser on the user computing device, of invocation of the at least one of the hover function and the click function for a selected one of the series of steps, rendering a third graphical depiction of a series of substeps associated with the selected one of the series of steps.

“12. The computer-implemented method of claim 9, further comprising: generating, by the web server, source code to define at least one of a hover function or a click function corresponding to one or more steps of the series of steps for selecting one of (i) detailed substeps corresponding to the one of the series of steps, and (ii) a document download or upload corresponding to the one of the series of steps; responsive to receipt, from the web browser of the user computing device, of an invocation of the at least one of the hover function and the click function for a selected one of series of steps, determining whether the invocation corresponds to a request for additional information corresponding to the selected one of the series of steps or a request for the document download or upload; responsive to a determination that the invocation corresponds to the request for additional information corresponding to the selected one of the series of steps, rendering a third graphical depiction of a series of substeps associated with the selected one of the series of steps; and responsive to a determination that the invocation corresponds to the document download or upload request for the selected one of the series of steps, executing a function that corresponds to the document download or upload request.

“13. The computer-implemented method of claim 12, further comprising generating, by the web server, source code to render a fourth graphical depiction including a list of documents needed for completion of a documents received step of the series of steps of the claim workflow.

“14. The computer-implemented method of claim 9, further comprising generating, by the web server, source code to cause the dynamic representation element to be displayed by the web browser as a progress bar.

“15. The computer-implemented method of claim 9, wherein the user computing device comprises a mobile phone.

“16. The computer-implemented method of claim 15, wherein the web browser comprises a claim status tracker application executing on the mobile phone.”

URL and more information on this patent, see: Albert, Victoria F.; Shukla, Susmita. Systems And Methods For Status Data Graphical Interface. U.S. Patent Number 10,621,669, filed June 16, 2017, and published online on April 27, 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=10,621,669.PN.&OS=PN/10,621,669RS=PN/10,621,669

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