“Systems And Methods For Ensuring And Verifying Remote Health Or Diagnostic Test Quality” in Patent Application Approval Process (USPTO 20230359421): Patent Application

2023 NOV 27 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- A patent application by the inventors DuBois, Raymond Glenn (Palm City, FL, US); Heising, James Thomas (Richland, WA, US); Miller, Sam (Hollywood, FL, US); Nienstedt, Zachary Carl (Wilton Manors, FL, US); Sands, John Andrew (Weston, FL, US), filed on March 31, 2023, was made available online on November 9, 2023, 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: “

“Field

“The present application is directed to remote medical diagnostic testing and testing platforms.

“Description

“The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Thus, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the material described in this section qualifies as prior art merely by virtue of its inclusion in this section.

“Use of telehealth to deliver healthcare services has grown consistently over the last several decades and has experienced very rapid growth in the last several years. Telehealth can include the distribution of health-related services and information via electronic information and telecommunication technologies. Telehealth can allow for long distance patient and health provider contact, care, advice, reminders, education, intervention, monitoring, and remote admissions. Often, telehealth can involve the use of a user or patient’s personal user device, such as a smartphone, tablet laptop, personal computer, or other device. For example, a user or patient can interact with a remotely located medical care provider using live video, audio, or text-based chat through the personal user device. Generally, such communication occurs over a network, such as a cellular, wired, or wireless network. Such communication can occur over a local network, wide area network, internet network, and so forth.

“Remote or at-home healthcare testing and diagnostics can solve or alleviate some problems associated with in-person testing. For example, health insurance may not be required, travel to a testing site is avoided, and tests can be completed at a testing user’s convenience. However, remote or at-home testing introduces various additional logistical and technical issues, such as guaranteeing timely test delivery to a testing user, providing test delivery from a testing user to an appropriate lab, ensuring adequate user experience, ensuring proper sample collection, ensuring test verification and integrity, providing test result reporting to appropriate authorities and medical providers, and connecting testing users with medical providers who are needed to provide guidance and/or oversight of the testing procedures remotely.”

In addition to the background information obtained for this patent application, NewsRx journalists also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent application: “A user may administer a medical diagnostic exam using an augmented reality experience. The augmented reality experience may be mapped in a manner that timestamps various points of time, chapters, events, etc., within the augmented reality experience. In some embodiments, the system may detect an augmented reality experience failure during the user’s experience. The system may identify the timestamp that corresponds to moment the system detected an augmented reality experience failure and stop displaying the augmented reality experience to the user. In some embodiments, the system may transition to presenting a pre-recorded video to the user. The pre-recorded video may be mapped similarly to the map of the augmented reality experience. In some embodiments, the system may start the presentation of the pre-recorded video at the identical or similar timestamp that the system detected the last successful augmented reality frame was presented to the user.

“A system may verify image quality of an image captured by a user. The image may include a test reference card. The system may scan a code located on the reference card, which may include various test identifying elements. The system may align the image with a template by implementing feature matching. The system may assess the color of the captured image and adjust accordingly, which can help to ensure sufficient color. The system may check the detection threshold to help determine whether the image is of sufficient quality to detect a test result at or above the limit of detection. The system may further check the sharpness of the image and determine whether the image has sufficient overall quality. The system may determine the image has insufficient quality and guide the user to change the environment set up for improved image quality of subsequent images. Otherwise, the system may determine the image has sufficient quality and continue on to the interpretation of the test results.

“Captured face and/or voice data can be used to create a biometric hash which can be used for continuous verification throughout an at-home diagnostic test and later as an authentication method when accessing the result. This method can, in some embodiments, allow for testing and authentication of testing results to be achieved without requiring a user to provide their license, passport, or other government-issued identification.

“A system may provide adaptive video parsing and event tagging in a recording of a test session. A user may connect to a service or platform for task performance guidance, such as a proctored remote health or diagnostic testing platform, for a test session. The system may record the test session upon the connection. The system may also provide an audio, video, or audio and video connection and simultaneously save the recording data to a disk. A back-end process of the system may close the saved data file at the end of the test session and parse the data for future analysis. The system may create a database entry for the user’s test session. A configured set of distributed processes within the system may query the database for accessible test sessions and begin reading the data, creating event tags and compiling the results into a project. The project may include more than one test session from more than one user. A reviewer may be presented with the project to select a test session from and review the test session. The system may load the data for the reviewer to review. The system may present to the reviewer a visual representation of the computed events of interest and a video and/or audio player. The reviewer may select a computed event of interest to review.

“The system may also evaluate proctor script compliance. The system may identify words or phrases of which the proctor says during the test session. The system may then compare the words or phrases identified with a script provided by the platform prior to the start of the test session. The system may then generate a score that quantifies the percent match between the words or phrases identified and the script.

“In one aspect, a computer-implemented method for managing an augmented reality user experience, the method comprising: providing, by a computer system, an augmented reality user experience to a user for use; timestamping, by a computer system, the augmented reality user experience based on at least one predetermined time interval; detecting, by the computer system, a failure of the augmented reality user experience by determining a timestamp that corresponds to the failure of the augmented reality user experience; identifying the timestamp that the failure of the augmented reality user experience occurred at; terminating, by the computer system, the augmented reality user experience at the timestamp that the failure of the augmented reality user experience occurred at; and providing, by the computer system, a prerecorded video to the user for display, the prerecorded video displaying to the user at a corresponding timestamp.

“In some embodiments, the method wherein the augmented reality user experience is a remote health diagnostic exam.

“In some embodiments, the method wherein the prerecorded video is timestamped based on the at least one predetermined time interval that the augmented reality user experience timestamping is based on.

“In some embodiments, the method wherein the corresponding timestamp is approximately equal to the timestamp that corresponds to the failure of the augmented reality user experience.

“In some embodiments, the method wherein the corresponding timestamp is less than the timestamp that the failure of the augmented reality user experience occurred at.

“In another aspect, a computer-implemented method for verifying an image quality of at least one image captured by a user device, the method comprising: receiving, by a computer system, the at least one image captured by the user using a camera of the user device, the at least one image including at least one test identifying element; scanning, by the computer system, the at least one image to identify the at least one test identifying element; aligning, by the computer system, the at least one image to a template; adjusting, by the computers system, coloring of the at least one image based on a predetermined color scheme; and determining, by the computer system, whether the at least one image passes a predetermined quality threshold.

“In some embodiments, the method wherein determining whether the at least one image passes the predetermined quality threshold comprises: determining whether the at least one image passes detection threshold; and determining whether the at least one image passes a sharpness threshold.

“In some embodiments, the method further comprising instructing the user to capture an additional at least one image based on whether the at least one image passes the predetermined quality threshold.

“In some embodiments, the method wherein the detection threshold is based on at least one of: a predetermined dynamic range; a predetermined brightness; a predetermined noise floor level; or a predetermined blur threshold.

“In some embodiments, the method wherein the at least one test identifying element includes at least one of: a QR code; an NFC tag; or at least one image recognizer.

“In some embodiments, the method wherein aligning the at least one image to the template includes implementing feature matching.

“In another aspect, a computer system for verifying an image quality of at least one image captured by a user device, the system comprising at least one memory and at least one process, the at least one memory storing instructions that cause the processor to: receive the at least one image captured by the user using a camera of the user device, the at least one image including at least one test identifying element; scan the at least one image to identify the at least one test identifying element; align the at least one image to a template; adjust coloring of the at least one image based on a predetermined color scheme; and determine whether the at least one image passes a predetermined quality threshold.

“In some embodiments, the system wherein determining whether the at least one image passes the predetermined quality threshold comprises: determining whether the at least one image passes a detection threshold; and determining whether the at least one image passes a sharpness threshold.

“In some embodiments, the system wherein the at least one memory storing instruction further causes the process to instruct the user to capture an additional at least one image based on whether the at least one image passes the predetermined quality threshold.

“In some embodiments, the system wherein the detection threshold is based on at least one of: a predetermined dynamic range; a predetermined brightness; a predetermined noise floor level; or a predetermined blur threshold.

“In some embodiments, the system wherein the at least one memory storing instructions that cause the processor to use line detection to determine whether the at least one image passes the detection threshold.

“In some embodiments, the system wherein the at least one test identifying element includes at least one of: a QR code; an NFC tag; or at least one image recognizer.

“In some embodiments, the system wherein the at least one memory storing instructions that causes the processor to align the at least one image to the template includes implementation of feature matching.”

There is additional summary information. Please visit full patent to read further.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A computer-implemented method for providing an augmented reality user experience to a user comprising: receiving, from a user device of the user by a computing system, a request for an augmented reality user experience; generating, by the computing system, data to cause the user device to display the augmented reality user experience on a display of the user device; transmitting, by the computing system, the data to the user device; timestamping, by the computing system, the augmented reality user experience based on at least one time interval; detecting, by the computing system, a failure of the augmented reality user experience; determining, by the computing system, a timestamp of the failure of the augmented reality user experience; providing, by the computing system to the user device, instructions to stop the augmented reality user experience; and providing, by the computing system to the user device, instructions to cause the user device to provide an alternative user experience to the user on the display of the user device.

“2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising: providing, by the computing system to the user device, a timestamp of the alternative user experience, the timestamp indicating a timestamp of the alternative user experience at which the user device begins the alternative user experience.

“3. The computer-implemented method of claim 2, wherein the timestamp of the alternative user experience is approximately equal to the timestamp of the failure of the augmented reality user experience.

“4. The computer-implemented method of claim 2, wherein the timestamp of the alternative user experience is less than the timestamp of the failure of the augmented reality user experience.

“5. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein detecting the failure of the augmented reality user experience detecting one or more of: a slowdown in network connection, a reduced frame rate, a loss of object tracking, or a frozen frame.

“6. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the augmented reality user experience comprises a remote health diagnostic exam.

“7. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the at least one time interval is a predetermined time interval.

“8. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the alternative user experience comprises a pre-recorded video.

“9. The computer-implemented method of claim 8, further comprises: generating, by the computing system, the pre-recorded video, wherein the pre-recorded video is based at least in part on an image of an environment of the user capturing using a camera of the user device of the user.

“10. The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising: receiving, by the computing system from the user device, an image frame; and determining, by the computing system, that the image frame passes a quality threshold.

“11. A computer-implemented system for providing an augmented reality user experience to a user comprising: a non-volatile electronic storage medium, the non-volatile electronic storage medium comprising computer-executable instructions; and one or more processors in electronic communication with the non-volatile storage medium and configured to execute the computer-executable instructions to cause the computer-implemented system to perform steps comprising: receiving, from a user device of the user, a request for an augmented reality user experience; generating, data to cause the user device to display the augmented reality user experience on a display of the user device; transmitting the data to the user device; timestamping the augmented reality user experience based on at least one time interval; detecting a failure of the augmented reality user experience; determining a timestamp of the failure of the augmented reality user experience; providing, to the user device, instructions to stop the augmented reality user experience; and providing, to the user device, instructions to cause the user device to provide an alternative user experience to the user on the display of the user device.

“12. The computer-implemented system of claim 11, wherein the computer-executable instructions further cause the computer-implemented system to: provide, to the user device, a timestamp of the alternative user experience, the timestamp indicating a timestamp of the alternative user experience at which the user device begins the alternative user experience.

“13. The computer-implemented system of claim 12, wherein the timestamp of the alternative user experience is approximately equal to the timestamp of the failure of the augmented reality user experience.

“14. The computer-implemented system of claim 12, wherein the timestamp of the alternative user experience is less than the timestamp of the failure of the augmented reality user experience.

“15. The computer-implemented system of claim 11, wherein detecting the failure of the augmented reality user experience detecting one or more of: a slowdown in network connection, a reduced frame rate, a loss of object tracking, or a frozen frame.

“16. The computer-implemented system of claim 11, wherein the augmented reality user experience comprises a remote health diagnostic exam.

“17. The computer-implemented system of claim 11, wherein the at least one time interval is a predetermined time interval.

“18. The computer-implemented system of claim 11, wherein the alternative user experience comprises a pre-recorded video.

“19. The computer-implemented system of claim 18, wherein the computer-executable instructions further cause the computer-implemented system to: generate the pre-recorded video, wherein the pre-recorded video is based at least in part on an image of an environment of the user capturing using a camera of the user device of the user.

“20. The computer-implemented system of claim 11, wherein the computer-executable instructions further cause the computer-implemented system to: receive, from the user device, an image frame; and determine, that the image frame passes a quality threshold.”

URL and more information on this patent application, see: DuBois, Raymond Glenn; Heising, James Thomas; Miller, Sam; Nienstedt, Zachary Carl; Sands, John Andrew. Systems And Methods For Ensuring And Verifying Remote Health Or Diagnostic Test Quality. U.S. Patent Application Number 20230359421, filed March 31, 2023 and posted November 9, 2023. Patent URL (for desktop use only): https://ppubs.uspto.gov/pubwebapp/external.html?q=(20230359421)&db=US-PGPUB&type=ids

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