“System For Measuring and Tracking Health Behaviors To Implement Health Actions” in Patent Application Approval Process (USPTO 20220037031): Patent Application

2022 FEB 18 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- A patent application by the inventor Lobach, David (Rougemont, NC, US), filed on October 18, 2021, was made available online on February 3, 2022, according to news reporting originating from Washington, D.C., by NewsRx 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: “Many known measures exist for monitoring and tracking health behaviors. An individual or patient has information such as age, weight, tobacco use, prescription medications filled, clinical services used, and studies performed among myriad other information stored and tracked within various health records. Increasingly, patients can also use technology to track measurements related to personal health behaviors such as steps taken, calories burned, blood glucose levels, and calories consumed to make health behavior decisions.

“Modern sources of health data are as numerous as they are disparate; an assessment of a patient’s individual health requires gathering and separately considering information in many different formats. Further, a patient’s health is often assessed as a measure of factors characterizing the presence or absence of illness existing at one point in time. A patient, for example, is considered less healthy if he or she is currently suffering from or prone to a disease beyond his or her control. Recent advances in the healthcare field, however, suggest that health behaviors modifiable by the patient, not just the presence or absence of disease, are a major factor in the cost and long-term quality of healthcare. No system is currently capable of quantifying and tracking a single, standardized metric measuring a patient’s engagement in patient-modifiable health behaviors or using such a metric to implement health actions within a healthcare system.”

In addition to the background information obtained for this patent application, NewsRx journalists also obtained the inventor’s summary information for this patent application: “A health index system includes a processor receiving an accumulated health data for a patient from a behavior database of a health information system and filtering the accumulated health data into a patient modifiable data by including in the patient modifiable data only data related to clinical and non-clinical patient modifiable behaviors. The processor calculates a health index for the patient from the patient modifiable data and transmits the health index to an index database of the health information system.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A healthcare resource, comprising: a health information system corresponding to a plurality of providers, a plurality of insurers, and a patient population including a plurality of patients, the health information system including: a behavior database storing an accumulated health data for each patient of the patient population, the accumulated health data including data from the providers, the insurers, and the patients; a first index database; and a first processor connected to the first index database; and a health index system connected to the health information system, the health index system having a memory and a second processor connected to the memory, the second processor executing a plurality of algorithms stored on the memory to: receive the accumulated health data from the behavior database; filter the accumulated health data into a patient modifiable data; calculate a plurality of health indices from the patient modifiable data; and transmit the health indices to the first index database of the health information system, the first index database stores the health indices with each health index corresponding to one patient of the patient population, the first processor determines a health action executed at at least one of the providers, the insurers, and the patients based on the health indices.

“2. The healthcare resource system of claim 1, wherein the second processor filters the accumulated health data by including in the patient modifiable data only data related to clinical and non-clinical patient modifiable behaviors.

“3. The healthcare resource system of claim 2, wherein the second processor calculates each health index from a plurality of subcomponents, each of the subcomponents has a weighted subcomponent score determined from a subcomponent score and a subcomponent weight, and the second processor sums the weighted subcomponent scores to calculate the health index.

“4. The healthcare resource system of claim 3, wherein the second processor calculates the subcomponent score of each of the subcomponents from a plurality of behavior categories each having a weighted behavior category score, calculates each weighted behavior category score from a plurality of health behavior measures each having a health behavior measure score, and determines the health behavior measure score from at least one data element in the patient modifiable data.

“5. The healthcare resource system of claim 4, wherein the second processor determines a data quality indicator from the patient modifiable data by comparing a plurality of first data elements in the patient modifiable data with a plurality of second data elements capable of being incorporated into at least one subcomponent score.

“6. The healthcare resource system of claim 1, wherein the health index system has a second index database connected to the second processor and storing the health indices calculated over time for each patient.

“7. The healthcare resource system of claim 6, wherein the second processor determines a patient activation indicator based on a pattern of health behavior in the patient modifiable data of the health indices stored in the second index database over time for each patient.

“8. The healthcare resource system of claim 1, wherein the health information system has a threshold database storing a plurality of score thresholds, a plurality of appointment thresholds, and a plurality of insurer thresholds.

“9. The healthcare resource system of claim 8, wherein the health action is a score alert and the first processor retrieves the score thresholds from the threshold database, compares the score thresholds to the health index of one of the patients, determines the score alert for each instance of the health index exceeding the score threshold, and transmits the score alert to a patient device of the patient.

“10. The healthcare resource system of claim 8, wherein the first processor retrieves the health index particular to one patient from the first index database and transmits the health index to a provider computing system of one of the providers particular to the one patient.

“11. The healthcare resource system of claim 10, wherein the health action is an appointment alert and the first processor retrieves the appointment thresholds from the threshold database, compares the appointment thresholds to a plurality of previous appointment dates of the one patient, determines the appointment alert for each instance of the previous appointment dates exceeding the appointment threshold, and transmits the appointment alert to the provider computing system.

“12. The healthcare resource system of claim 8, wherein the health action is one of a plurality of insurer actions and the plurality of insurer thresholds include a plurality of positive insurer thresholds and a plurality of negative insurer thresholds.

“13. The healthcare resource system of claim 12, wherein each insurer has an insurer computing system with an insurer processor, an insurer memory, a plan database storing a plan data on an insurance plan for each of the plurality of patients, and a program database storing a plurality of health-based incentive programs of the insurer.

“14. The healthcare resource system of claim 12, wherein the first processor receives the positive insurer thresholds from the threshold database, compares the positive insurer thresholds to the health index of one patient, and determines a payment decrease action for each instance of the health index exceeding the positive insurer threshold.

“15. The healthcare resource system of claim 14, wherein the first processor transmits the payment decrease action to the insurer computing system, the insurer processor incorporating the payment decrease action into the plan data of the one patient to decrease a monthly premium or a copayment of the one patient.

“16. The healthcare resource system of claim 13, wherein the first processor receives the negative insurer thresholds from the threshold database, compares the negative insurer thresholds to the health index of one patient, and determines a payment increase action and/or a program recommendation for each instance of the health index exceeding the negative insurer threshold.

“17. The healthcare resource system of claim 16, wherein the first processor transmits the payment increase action to the insurer computing system, the insurer processor incorporating the payment increase action into the plan data of the one patient to increase a monthly premium or a copayment of the one patient.

“18. The healthcare resource system of claim 16, wherein the first processor transmits the program recommendation to a patient device of the patient.

“19. A health index system, comprising: a processor executing a plurality of algorithms stored on a memory to: receiving an accumulated health data for a patient from a behavior database of a health information system; filtering the accumulated health data into a patient modifiable data by including in the patient modifiable data only data related to clinical and non-clinical patient modifiable behaviors; calculating a health index for the patient from the patient modifiable data; and transmitting the health index to an index database of the health information system.

“20. A method, comprising the steps of: receiving an accumulated health data for a patient from a behavior database of a health information system; filtering the accumulated health data into a patient modifiable data by including in the patient modifiable data only data related to clinical and non-clinical patient modifiable behaviors; calculating a health index for the patient from the patient modifiable data; and transmitting the health index to an index database of the health information system.”

URL and more information on this patent application, see: Lobach, David. System For Measuring and Tracking Health Behaviors To Implement Health Actions. Filed October 18, 2021 and posted February 3, 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=%2220220037031%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20220037031&RS=DN/20220037031

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