Researchers Submit Patent Application, “Accoustic Masking System and Method for Enabling Hipaa Compliance in Treatment Setting”, for Approval

By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Politics & Government Week -- From Washington, D.C., VerticalNews journalists report that a patent application by the inventors Forrest, Ben (Redmond, WA); Miller-Klein, Erik (Redmond, WA), filed on November 17, 2014, was made available online on May 28, 2015.

No assignee for this patent application has been made.

News editors obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors: "The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) mandates that individually identifiable patient health information be protected. Although written and computer files are obviously to be protected by means of encryption and suitable network security, nonetheless, verbal information must also be protected. 'Covered entities' (those who must comply with the law) must make reasonable efforts to safeguard patient information from being overheard. The law itself gives no specific guidance on how this is to be accomplished, but a document released by the Department of Health and Human Services provides some clarification. It includes, as part of the protection, the phrase 'health information whether it is on paper, in computers, or communicated orally'. As a result, many administrators have understood that specific design features ought to be incorporated into design of medical facilities, and in many instances have already begun retrofitting to assure compliance.

"The Cone of Silence was one of many recurring joke devices portrayed in 'Get Smart,' an American television comedy series of the 1960s about an inept spy. According to the story line, the device is designed to protect the most secret of conversations (aka 'C.O.S. security risks') by enshrouding its users within a transparent sound-proof shield. The fact that the device never works provides fuel for comedy. While the device is fictional, the credibility attached to the gag bears testimony to the difficulty in achieving suitable privacy by simply attenuating the acoustic energy the conversation conveying the private information entails. Damping, by itself, is often inadequate to get the results necessary to achieve compliance with HIPPAA.

"Among the best in the simple damping school of privacy protection is the technology disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,446,751 to Ahuja, et al. Comprising acoustical damping material arrayed within a familiar hospital room accessory, the privacy curtain, the product is marketed under the mark 'Hush Curtain' and proves to be very effective.

"Unfortunately, the redundancy of normal conversation and the remarkable facility of the human brain to reconstruct acoustical speech artifacts into meaningful data means that even the most effective damping strategy may not be enough to achieve the goals of the HIPPAA legislation. To further meet the objectives of the Act, more is often necessary. Rather than to damp energy out of the conversation, augmenting the acoustic energy with random acoustic information is proven to 'mask' the conversation.

"Sound masking is the addition of natural or artificial sound (such as white noise or pink noise) into an environment to camouflage sound rather than to damp out all acoustic artifacts out of the ambient environment. Additionally, sound masking also reduces or eliminates patient awareness of generated sounds in a hospital area where the work is incident to healing patients. Acoustic levels in today's hospitals are very high. A study conducted by Busch-Vishniac et al. in 2005 found that sound pressure levels have risen significantly and consistently since 1960. Sound masking, thus, has the dual benefits of enhancing privacy and making the environment more conducive for healing.

"Sound masking can be explained by an analogy with light. Imagine a dark room where someone is turning a flashlight on and off. The light is very obvious and distracting. Now, imagine that the room lights are turned on. The flashlight is still being turned on and off, but is no longer noticeable because it has been 'masked'. Sound masking is a similar process of covering a distracting sound with a more soothing or less intrusive sound. Sound masking is the addition of natural or artificial sound (such as white noise or pink noise) into an environment to cover up unwanted sound. This masking is in contrast to the technique of active noise control which involves elimination of the sound in the selected environment. By contrast, sound masking reduces or eliminates awareness of pre-existing sounds in that environment.

"Another challenge renders most masking devices unusable in the hospital environment that of an absolute limitation on the volume of acoustical energy for an acceptable environment for healing. The Facility Guidelines Institute (FGI) has developed a new standard for residential facilities. Titled 'Guidelines for Design and Construction of Residential Health, Care, and Support Facilities', the document provides minimum recommendations for new construction and renovation of nursing homes, hospice facilities, assisted living facilities, independent living settings, adult day care facilities, wellness centers, and outpatient rehabilitation centers. The 2010 FGI/ASHE Guidelines for Design and Construction for Health Care Facilities ('FGI') allow a 48 dB maximum for noise in the ambient hospital environment. As such, most masking devices are impractical for use in a hospital as they simply spray masking noise into environs in a manner such that to effectively mask conversation, the introduction of over 52 dB by conventional means is necessary to achieve the goal of removing cognizable conversation from the ambient. What is missing in the art is a system for obscuring conversation in a manner to comply with both the requirements of HIPPAA and the FGI.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

"Preferred and alternative examples of the present invention are described in detail below with reference to the following drawings:

"FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a curtain and masker system for assuring privacy in conversation within confines the curtain encloses;

"FIG. 2 is an acoustic map of a masking output of an inventive masking device affixed to the acoustic curtain to form the curtain and masker system of FIG. 1;

"FIGS. 3 and 4 depict a presently preferred embodiment of the invention showing the principal elements as they might be arranged in situ; and

"FIG. 5 is Table 3 from the ANSI S3.5-1997 entitled, 'Methods for Calculation of the Speech Intelligibility Index.'"

As a supplement to the background information on this patent application, VerticalNews correspondents also obtained the inventors' summary information for this patent application: "A method and system for masking to a listener a conversation between a care provider and a patient such that the conversation becomes unintelligible to the listener, includes interposing an acoustically absorbent curtain that substantially spans between the floor and the ceiling and is positioned between the listener and the care provider and patient. A masking device is affixed to the curtain generally between the floor and the ceiling at a position along the barrier length and at a height approximately coinciding with a height of a mouth of the care provider. The masking device includes at least one speaker having an axis oriented generally perpendicular to the plane the curtain defines. An amplifier drives the speaker to produce a sound to propagate along the axis. A signal source provided at the amplifier input produces the sound selected to mask the conversation between the care provider and the patient."

For additional information on this patent application, see: Forrest, Ben; Miller-Klein, Erik. Accoustic Masking System and Method for Enabling Hipaa Compliance in Treatment Setting. Filed November 17, 2014 and posted May 28, 2015. Patent URL: http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.html&r=4164&p=84&f=G&l=50&d=PG01&S1=20150521.PD.&OS=PD/20150521&RS=PD/20150521

Keywords for this news article include: Patents, Hospital, Legal Issues.

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