Researchers Submit Patent Application, “Information Processing System and Selection Support Method”, for Approval (USPTO 20220188951): Patent Application

2022 JUN 01 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- From Washington, D.C., NewsRx journalists report that a patent application by the inventors TAKEUCHI, Wataru (Tokyo, JP); TARUMI, Shinji (Tokyo, JP); YUI, Shuntaro (Tokyo, JP), filed on November 22, 2021, was made available online on June 16, 2022.

No assignee for this patent application has been made.

News editors obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors: “

“The present invention relates to an information processing system configured to analyze healthcare data in the medical field.

“It is an urgent issue to build a sustainable medical care provision system in response to the rapid increase in medical cost due to rapid demographic changes such as the declining birthrate and aging population. In the presence of various stakeholders, evidence-based decision-making is necessary to formulate a new system that balances a guarantee of the quality of medical care and the optimization of medical cost. Utilization of accumulated data has become a global movement, and data analysis is considered as one of the effective methods for generating evidences. A high-quality medical care provision system can be established by giving incentives and penalties according to the effects and efficacy of a medical practice and measure extracted by data analysis. In efficacy analysis currently being performed, the analysis is performed according to the presence or absence of a medical practice and the providing amount.

“It is an urgent issue to build a sustainable social security provision system in response to the rapid increase in medical cost due to the declining birthrate and aging population. In the presence of various stakeholders, evidence-based decision-making is necessary to formulate a new system that balances a guarantee of the quality of the social security service and the optimization of costs and to perform the social security service, and the utilization of accumulated data is required.

“The following technique is the related art in the technical field. Patent Literature 1 (JP-A-2019-87239) describes a region general care business system including a database including elderly people basic data, needed care insurance data, medical insurance data, and regional measure data, in which a regional management support function unit outputs, for each business unit from medical or care data, a quantitative analysis report on elderly people information and service usage status, and a qualitative report based on an indicator showing a change in a state of a mental and physical state item; a regional information management function unit outputs an activity evaluation result related to the quantity and quality of a service in individual form for each business unit; and an elderly people information management function unit centrally manages basic information, mental and physical state usage service status, and medical status of the elderly people, and supports confirmation of an effect of a care plan and review policy examination of the next plan by referring to past histories of the basic information, mental and physical state usage service status, and medical status of the elderly people.

“A system for providing a high-quality social security service can be established by implementing an effective and cost-effective service. However, when a specific service is determined, it is necessary to consider not only an effect of the service to inhibit a future disease onset, but also various numerical values such as cost required to provide the service, disease incidence, infectious disease risk, side effect risk, readmission risk, reoperation risk, and potential income by providing the service, and considering a specific aspect, the service to be provided is limited, and therefore, there is a problem that it is difficult to provide the service. In particular, which aspect should be considered may depend on an idea that a service provider and a consumer emphasize, and the lack of a unique solution makes the problem even more difficult.”

As a supplement to the background information on this patent application, NewsRx correspondents also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent application: “Therefore, an object of the invention is to make it possible to provide an appropriate social security service considering a plurality of goals to be achieved such as a cost, a disease onset, and an infectious disease, when a cost-effective social security service is selected. In addition, another object of the invention is to select an appropriate service even if a goal to be emphasized by the service provider and the service consumer is ambiguous, when a cost-effective social security service is selected.

“A typical example of the invention disclosed in the present application is as follows. That is, an information processing system configured to support selection of a social security service, the information processing system being implemented by a computer including a calculation device configured to execute a predetermined process and a storage device connected to the calculation device, and the calculation device being accessible to a database including attribute data of a plurality of insurers, attribute data of a plurality of insured persons, supply and demand data of a plurality of social security services, clinical data of the plurality of insured persons, and cost data of a social security service provided to the insured persons, the information processing system includes: a similar data extraction unit configured to calculate a similarity of the attribute data of the insurers and a similarity of the attribute data of the insured persons using the database; a time-series change extraction unit configured to calculate a time-series change in the clinical data of the plurality of insured persons and a time-series change in the cost data according to the plurality of social security services to be provided using the database; a learning unit configured to weight each of the clinical data and the cost data based on the calculated similarities and the calculated time-series changes, and to learn an evaluation index representing a value of the social security service; an input unit configured to receive input of an attribute of an insured person to be analyzed and a social security service; and an output unit configured to output an evaluation index of an available social security service according to an attribute of an insured person.

“According to one aspect of the invention, an appropriate social security service considering a plurality of goals can be provided. Problems, configurations, and effects other than those described above are made clear by the following explanation of the embodiment.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. An information processing system configured to support selection of a social security service, the information processing system being implemented by a computer including a calculation device configured to execute a predetermined process and a storage device connected to the calculation device, the calculation device being accessible to a database including attribute data of a plurality of insurers, attribute data of a plurality of insured persons, supply and demand data of a plurality of social security services, clinical data of the plurality of insured persons, and cost data of a social security service provided to the insured persons, the information processing system comprising: an input unit configured to receive input of an attribute of an insured person to be analyzed and a social security service; a similar data extraction unit configured to calculate a similarity of the attribute data of the insurers and a similarity of the attribute data of the insured persons using the database; a time-series change extraction unit configured to calculate a time-series change in the clinical data of the plurality of insured persons and a time-series change in the cost data according to the plurality of social security services to be provided using the database; a learning unit configured to weight each of the clinical data and the cost data based on the calculated similarities and the calculated time-series changes, and to learn an evaluation index representing a value of the social security service; and an output unit configured to output an evaluation index of an available social security service according to an attribute of an insured person.

“2. The information processing system according to claim 1, wherein the time-series change extraction unit is configured to: generate a constraint condition for a cluster group of insured persons based on the similarity of the attribute data of the insurers, generate a cluster group of insured persons based on the generated constraint condition and the similarity of the attribute data of the insured persons, and calculate, for each generated cluster group, a time-series change in the clinical data of the plurality of insured persons and a time-series change in the cost data

“3. The information processing system according to claim 2, wherein the learning unit is configured to: extract, for each cluster group of insured persons, clinical data and cost data in which the calculated time-series changes satisfy a predetermined condition, and weight the extracted clinical data and cost data to generate, as the evaluation index, a loss function based on a weighted sum of item values.

“4. The information processing system according to claim 2, further comprising: a prediction unit configured to predict a risk value including at least one of future disease onsets; and a service cost prediction unit configured to predict future cost data of the social security service using the risk value, wherein the learning unit weights each of the clinical data and the cost data based on the predicted risk value and the predicted future cost data, and to learn an evaluation index representing a value of the social security service.

“5. The information processing system according to claim 4, wherein the learning unit is configured to: extract, for each cluster group of insured persons, clinical data and cost data in which the calculated time-series changes satisfy a predetermined condition, and weight the extracted clinical data and cost data based on the predicted risk value and the predicted future cost data to generate, as the evaluation index, a loss function based on a weighted sum of item values.

“6. A selection support method of supporting selection of a social security service by a computer, the computer including a calculation device configured to execute a predetermined process and a storage device connected to the calculation device, the calculation device being accessible to a database including attribute data of a plurality of insurers, attribute data of a plurality of insured persons, supply and demand data of a plurality of social security services, clinical data of the plurality of insured persons, and cost data of a social security service provided to the insured persons, the selection support method comprising: an input step of receiving, by the calculation device, input of an attribute of an insured person to be analyzed and a social security service; a similar data extraction step of calculating, by the calculation device, a similarity of the attribute data of the insurers and a similarity of the attribute data of the insured persons using the database; a time-series change extraction step of calculating, by the calculation device, a time-series change in the clinical data of the plurality of insured persons and a time-series change in the cost data according to the plurality of social security services to be provided using the database; a learning step of weighting, by the calculation device, each of the clinical data and the cost data based on the calculated similarities and the calculated time-series changes, and learning an evaluation index representing a value of the social security service; and an output step of outputting, by the calculation device, an evaluation index of an available social security service according to an attribute of an insured person.

“7. The selection support method according to claim 6, wherein in the time-series change extraction step, the calculation device is configured to: generate a constraint condition for a cluster group of insured persons based on the similarity of the attribute data of the insurers, generate a cluster group of insured persons based on the generated constraint condition and the similarity of the attribute data of the insured persons, and calculate, for each generated cluster group, a time-series change in the clinical data of the plurality of insured persons and a time-series change in the cost data.

“8. The selection support method according to claim 7, wherein in the learning step, the calculation device is configured to: extract, for each cluster group of insured persons, clinical data and cost data in which the calculated time-series changes satisfy a predetermined condition, and weight the extracted clinical data and cost data to generate, as the evaluation index, a loss function based on a weighted sum of item values.

“9. The selection support method according to claim 7, further comprising: a prediction step of predicting, by the calculation device, a risk value including at least one of future disease onsets; and a service cost prediction step of predicting, by the calculation device, future cost data of the social security service using the risk value, wherein in the learning step, the calculation device is configured to weight each of the clinical data and the cost data based on the predicted risk value and the predicted future cost data, and to learn an evaluation index representing a value of the social security service.

“10. The selection support method according to claim 9, wherein in the learning step, the calculation device is configured to: extract, for each cluster group of insured persons, clinical data and cost data in which the calculated time-series changes satisfy a predetermined condition, and weight the extracted clinical data and cost data based on the predicted risk value and the predicted future cost data to generate, as the evaluation index, a loss function based on a weighted sum of item values.”

For additional information on this patent application, see: TAKEUCHI, Wataru; TARUMI, Shinji; YUI, Shuntaro. Information Processing System and Selection Support Method. Filed November 22, 2021 and posted June 16, 2022. Patent URL: https://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220220188951%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20220188951&RS=DN/20220188951

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