“Protected Health Information Voice Data and / Or Transcript of Voice Data Capture, Processing and Submission” in Patent Application Approval Process…

"Protected Health Information Voice Data and / Or Transcript of Voice Data Capture, Processing and Submission" in Patent Application Approval Process (USPTO 20150278449)

By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Politics & Government Week -- A patent application by the inventor LaBorde, David (Norcross, GA), filed on March 28, 2014, was made available online on October 8, 2015, according to news reporting originating from Washington, D.C., by VerticalNews correspondents.

This patent application has not been assigned to a company or institution.

The following quote was obtained by the news editors from the background information supplied by the inventors: "The present application generally relates to heath information voice data and/or transcript of voice data and more specifically to the capturing, processing, and submission of this data from a mobile device.

"Protected Health Information is defined by the US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Interpretations of what PHI might include can be found on Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_health_information as accessed Mar. 28, 2013; HIPAA.com, http://www.hipaa.com/2009/09/hipaa-protected-health-information-what-does- -phi-include/ as accessed on Mar. 28, 2013; and from many other 3.sup.rd party information sources.

"The US government generally requires that systems accessing electronic health records need to be configured to grant access to PHI only to people who need to know it. If PHI is accessed by a person not authorized to access it, then this could indicate a violation of both the HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules. Under certain circumstances, such an incident may have to be reported to the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and/or a state agency as a breach of unsecured protected health information. Having good access controls and knowledge of who has viewed or used information (i.e., access logs) can help to prevent or detect these data breaches."

In addition to the background information obtained for this patent application, VerticalNews journalists also obtained the inventor's summary information for this patent application: "Briefly, the invention addresses challenges presented by a mobile provider workforce that sees patients within and across complex healthcare organizations which are frequently remote from the location where the healthcare insurance reimbursement claims are prepared and submitted. The invention accomplishes this by enabling on-the-go healthcare providers to capture and submit information about services rendered from any location via multiple modalities available on a mobile device. By using the technology, health care providers and healthcare provider organizations can accelerate clinical and administrative workflows, leading to more streamlined and timely medical claim generation and submission.

"For example a small private practice doctor can transmit billing information from the hospital to his or her back office by taking a photograph of the patient identifiers/insurance information and annotating that with speech derived data and manual data entry (i.e., annotate with billing codes or description of services provided) without the need for the implementation of a costly integration between a hospital information system and his back office (practice management) information system. The invention allows this to be done on a mobile device and in a way that is secure and in compliance with HIPAA privacy and security regulations. As such, the hospital can feel comfortable in that the provider is using a secure means to do this. In fact, users of the system may be the hospital's own employees and they may simply be transmitting data from one area or business unit or operation of the hospital to another (i.e., from the clinical side at the point of care to the billing operations in the back office). The hospital may prefer this system be used as opposed to simply having users doing this via renegade unapproved and non-secure means, such as taking photographs on their phone that end up stored unencrypted and non-password protected or texting protected patient information in clear text via SMS texting.

"The invention can comprise the following basic steps:

"1. Take a photograph of the key demographics of the patient (name, date of birth, account number, medical record number, gender, etc. or generally patient identification information), often from a patient sticker or a hospital facesheet;

"2. Allow a user to make additional annotations to this information (description of services rendered and/or the actual diagnosis and billing codes, location of the services, etc.);

"3. Securely parse or extract this patient identification information (potentially initially locally on the device but in the long run remotely in a data center and NOT on the device, i.e., wipe it from the device) and transmit it to a charge capture manager device at a back end system where it is stored securely at rest in a charge database;

"4. Process this information via a combination of machines with or without human quality assurance, with the process being turning the data in the image to structured data persisted in data transport objects (data set) and some sort of data repository (charge database); and

"5. Transmit, provide access to, or present the information for consumption in a downstream business process, i.e., creating a medical claim. This can range from allowing an employee or medical billing staff member to pull up the information (i.e., look at it on a screen) from the charge database via the charge capture manager device to sending the information via an application programming interface or via a standard communications protocol like HL7 or Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) transaction (i.e., an EDI 5010 transaction) to a downstream system (i.e., a practice management software or a claims clearing house on another client device).

"Accordingly, there is a need for a system and method for capturing, processing, and submission of this information, data, and images from a mobile device in a simple and secure manner, thereby simplifying the information collection and billing process for professionals, such as physicians. It is to this need and other needs that the present invention is directed.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

"FIG. 1 illustrates an example workflow of user adding diagnosis information (diagnosis codes) by voice--step one: initiate 'Select diagnoses . . . ' process.

"FIG. 2 illustrates an example workflow of user adding diagnosis information (diagnosis codes) by voice--step two: speak diagnosis, transcript of utterance is returned, a query is initiated and a list of results from which user can choose a match is returned.

"FIG. 3 illustrates an example workflow of user adding a memo addendum to a 'bill', or an accounting of services rendered to a patient during a care episode, by voice--step one: initiate ' . . . add a voice memo . . . ' process.

"FIG. 4 illustrates an example workflow of user adding a memo addendum to a 'bill', or an accounting of services rendered to a patient during a care episode, by voice--step two (optional): select a 'prompting' template.

"FIG. 5 illustrates an example workflow of user adding a memo addendum to a 'bill', or an accounting of services rendered to a patient during a care episode, by voice--speak memo, transcript of utterances is returned as body of memo, use template as a guide if desired, save memo and submit to back office with the patient charges or 'bill.'

"FIGS. 6-26 illustrate an example application or 'app' on a smart phone, showing a series of screen captures of the invention in use.

"FIG. 27 depicts more traditional interfaces for data exchange between organizations or within organizations.

"FIG. 28A depicts an application of the present invention in a medical context where a mobile provider is using his or her mobile device at some point of care (i.e., a hospital) and in the course of his or her activity is capturing data necessary to document, bill for, and memorialize the services or procedures rendered for one or more patients.

"FIG. 28B is a block diagram illustrating exemplary portions of the client device and manager device at the organization in an exemplary operating environment."

URL and more information on this patent application, see: LaBorde, David. Protected Health Information Voice Data and / Or Transcript of Voice Data Capture, Processing and Submission. Filed March 28, 2014 and posted October 8, 2015. Patent URL: http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.html&r=3969&p=80&f=G&l=50&d=PG01&S1=20151001.PD.&OS=PD/20151001&RS=PD/20151001

Keywords for this news article include: Patents, Hospital, Government Agencies Offices and Entities.

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