Patent Issued for Unified data fabric for managing data lifecycles and data flows (USPTO 11861037): Aetna Inc.

2024 JAN 22 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- According to news reporting originating from Alexandria, Virginia, by NewsRx journalists, a patent by the inventors Bord, Igor B. (Richboro, PA, US), Ianni, Dale J. (Coventry, CT, US), Jensen, Claus T. (Pawling, NY, US), Pierce, Jr., John A. (Manchester, CT, US), filed on November 4, 2019, was published online on January 2, 2024.

The assignee for this patent, patent number 11861037, is Aetna Inc. (Hartford, Connecticut, United States).

Reporters obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors: “Data is widely available via the Internet or other sources. Entire platforms have been developed to leverage data in a way that is useful for consumers or valuable for business entities. Social media is a multi-billion dollar business that is built upon the concept of leveraging data on individuals for purposes of advertising or analytics.

“However, there are many aspects of data collection that are of concern to consumers or regulators. For example, consumers have privacy concerns related to the collection of data on the Internet or through other means. In addition, much of the data that could be collected from various sources may be regulated by government laws or regulations, such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) in the United States or various data privacy laws in Europe, that could subject businesses that collect or utilize that data to civil or criminal penalties.

“For organizations that rely on this data for one or more aspects of their business, another concern is in the reliability of the data. There is a lack of adequate safeguards in place to ensure that data collected is accurate and reliable. Where data is as likely to be inaccurate as accurate, the value of the data is severely diminished.

“Finally, it can be difficult utilizing conventional platforms to combine data from disparate sources to provide a comprehensive view of data related to individuals. It can be hard to match data from one data source to data from another data source and correlate the data as belonging to or being associated with a particular individual.”

In addition to obtaining background information on this patent, NewsRx editors also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent: “A unified data fabric for controlling data lifecycles and data flows between trusted data sources and data clients is described herein. A system can include a data ingestion engine and a data delivery engine. The data ingestion engine and the data delivery engine are connected to a data lifecycle engine that maintains data control policies and access control policies. The data ingestion engine is configured to control the data protection policies of data elements into the unified data fabric based on the data control policies, and the data delivery engine is configured to control access to data elements in the unified data fabric based on access control policies. Each data element from one or more trusted data sources is associated with a global identifier to provide a comprehensive view of information about a constituent from a variety of disparate data sources.

“In an embodiment, a system that manages data lifecycles and data flows between trusted data sources and data clients is disclosed. The system includes a data ingestion engine, a data lifecycle engine, and a data delivery engine. The data ingestion engine is configured to ingest data elements received from one or more trusted data sources. Each data element is associated with a global identifier allocated to a constituent associated with the information included in the data element. The data lifecycle engine is configured to manage access control policies for the data elements and map global identifiers to one or more source identifiers. The data delivery engine is configured to control access to the data elements based on the access control policies. In an embodiment, the constituent is one of an individual associated with demographic information, or an entity associated with a group of one or more individuals.

“In an embodiment, the data ingestion engine is configured to receive a notification that a particular data source published a first data element. The data ingestion engine is further configured to identify an ingestion interface corresponding to the particular data source, identify zero or more data control policies associated with the particular data source, and determine that the data element is approved to be integrated with other data elements within the unified data fabric platform based on the zero or more data control policies. The data ingestion engine is further configured to retrieve the first data element from the particular data source via the ingestion interface and store the first data element in a data store.

“In an embodiment, the data ingestion engine is further configured to process the first data element via conformance logic in accordance with one or more conformance rules for the particular data source, process the first data element via integration logic in accordance with permissions associated with the first data element, and record validation data that indicates whether the first data element was successfully ingested into the unified data fabric.

“In an embodiment, the conformance logic includes instructions that cause a processor to compare a particular source identifier to a table of source identifiers to identify a corresponding global identifier mapped to the particular source identifier and associate the corresponding global identifier with the first data element.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A computing device that manages data lifecycles and data flows between data sources and data clients, the computing device comprising: one or more memories storing instructions; and one or more processors configured to execute the instructions to cause the computing device to: receive a notification that a first data source published a first data element, wherein the first data element includes a first source identifier that associates the first data element with a first account or individual corresponding to the first source identifier; receive a notification that a second data source published a second data element, wherein the second data element includes a second source identifier that associates the second data element with a second account or individual corresponding to the second source identifier; determine that the first data element is approved to be integrated with the second data element within a unified data fabric system based on one or more data control policies; identify a global identifier mapped to the first source identifier included in the first data element and the second source identifier included in the second data element; receive the first data element from the first data source and the second data element from the second data source; generate an integrated data element that includes first information from the first data element and second information from the second data element, wherein the first data source is a trusted data source of the first information and the second data source is a trusted data source of the second information; associate the corresponding global identifier with the integrated data element by appending the global identifier to the integrated data element; store the integrated data element in a data store; receive a request from a client to access the integrated data element in the data store; determine whether the client is authorized to establish a connection with the unified data fabric system; determine whether the client is permitted to access the integrated data element based on a set of access control policies associated with the integrated data element, wherein the set of access control policies includes at least one access control policy configured to specify a consent preference for a particular constituent associated with the global identifier, and wherein the consent preference indicates limited consent for a subset of information included in the integrated data element or global consent for all information included in the integrated data element; and in response to the client not being authorized to establish the connection or not permitted to access the integrated data element, prevent transmission of the integrated data element to the client, or in response to the client being authorized to establish the connection and permitted to access the integrated data element, transmit the integrated data element to the client, wherein each unique global identifier is associated with a different constituent of the unified data fabric system that comprises one of: an individual associated with demographic information; or an entity associated with a group of one or more individuals.

“2. The computing device of claim 1, wherein the one or more processors are further configured to execute the instructions to cause the computing device to: identify a first ingestion interface corresponding to the first data source; identify the one or more data control policies associated with the first data source; identify a second ingestion interface corresponding to the second data source; and identify the one or more data control policies associated with the second data source.

“3. The computing device of claim 2, wherein the one or more processors are further configured to execute the instructions to cause the computing device to: process the first data element via conformance logic in accordance with one or more conformance rules for the first data source; process the second data element via the conformance logic in accordance with one or more conformance rules for the second data source; process the first data element via integration logic in accordance with permissions associated with the first data element; process the second data element via the integration logic in accordance with permissions associated with the second data element; and record validation data that indicates whether the first data element and/or the second data element were successfully ingested into the unified data fabric system.

“4. The computing device of claim 1, wherein the one or more processors are further configured to execute the instructions to cause the computing device to: manage data control policies and access control policies associated with data lifecycles, wherein at least one data control policy is configured to specify a data type permitted from a particular data source, and wherein at least one access control policy is configured to specify a constituent type permitted to view a data type via a client.

“5. The computing device of claim 1, wherein the set of access control policies includes at least one of: a privacy policy; a compliance policy; a permissions policy; or a group policy.

“6. A method for managing data lifecycles and data flows between data sources and data clients, the method comprising: receiving a notification that a first data source published a first data element, wherein the first data element includes a first source identifier that associates the first data element with a first account or individual corresponding to the first source identifier; receiving a notification that a second data source published a second data element, wherein the second data element includes a second source identifier that associates the second data element with a second account or individual corresponding to the second source identifier; determining that the first data element is approved to be integrated with the second data element within a unified data fabric system based on one or more data control policies; identifying a global identifier mapped to the first source identifier included in the first data element and the second source identifier included in the second data element; receiving the first data element from the first data source and the second data element from the second data source; generating an integrated data element that includes first information from the first data element and second information from the second data element, wherein the first data source is a trusted data source of the first information and the second data source is a trusted data source of the second information; associating the global identifier with the integrated data element by appending the global identifier to the integrated data element; storing the integrated data element in a data store; receiving a request from a client to access the integrated data element in the data store; determining whether the client is authorized to establish a connection with the unified data fabric system; determining whether the client is permitted to access the integrated data element based on a set of access control policies associated with the integrated data element, wherein the set of access control policies includes at least one access control policy configured to specify a consent preference for a particular constituent associated with the global identifier, and wherein the consent preference indicates limited consent for a subset of information included in the integrated data element or global consent for all information included in the integrated data element; and in response to the client not being authorized to establish the connection or not permitted to access the integrated data element, preventing transmission of the integrated data element to the client, or in response to the client being authorized to establish the connection and permitted to access the integrated data element, transmitting the integrated data element to the client, wherein each unique global identifier is associated with a different constituent of the unified data fabric system that comprises one of: an individual associated with demographic information; or an entity associated with a group of one or more individuals.

“7. The method of claim 6, wherein the first data element from the first data source is ingested via a first ingestion interface, and the second data element from the second data source is ingested via a second ingestion interface.

“8. The method of claim 6, wherein the set of access control policies include at least one of: a privacy policy; a compliance policy; a permissions policy; or a group policy.

“9. The method of claim 6, the method further comprising: processing the first data element via conformance logic in accordance with one or more conformance rules for the first data source; processing the second data element via the conformance logic in accordance with one or more conformance rules for the second data source; processing the first data element via integration logic in accordance with permissions associated with the first data element; processing the second data element via the integration logic in accordance with permissions associated with the second data element; and recording validation data that indicates whether the first data element and/or the second data element were successfully ingested.”

There are additional claims. Please visit full patent to read further.

For more information, see this patent: Bord, Igor B. Unified data fabric for managing data lifecycles and data flows. U.S. Patent Number 11861037, filed November 4, 2019, and published online on January 2, 2024. Patent URL (for desktop use only): https://ppubs.uspto.gov/pubwebapp/external.html?q=(11861037)&db=USPAT&type=ids

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