SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR VERIFYING PATIENT IMMUNITY

Abstract

A system and method for verifying a patient's immunity to a predetermined pathogen are provided. The contemplated system relies on at least one of patient-specific and exposure data, which could include immunization or vaccination data, to assess the patient's immunity to a predetermined pathogen. If immunity is verified, the patient is selectively issued a digital certificate real-time and/or on-demand used to allow access to a building, gain authorization to conduct predetermined activities, work, travel freely, etc. The immunity certificate may be renewed or revoked if predetermined events occur, such as a rise in body temperature over a predetermined level.

Claims

1. A method configured for verifying a patient's immunity to at least one pathogen, comprising: obtaining patient-specific data directly or indirectly from the patient comprising at least one patient identifying characteristic; obtaining exposure data related to the patient's exposure to the at least one pathogen; gathering data related to the patient's infection; verifying the patient's immunity; creating a digital record of the patient's immunity; adding a predefined validation code by a healthcare professional to at least one of the patient-specific data, exposure data, and digital record; forwarding the patient-specific data, exposure data, and digital record to a database; selectively accessing the database upon compliance with at least one security protocol; and generating a digital certificate related to the patient's immunity to the at least one pathogen.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein data related to patient infection comprises exposure data and/or vaccination data.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the digital certificate will expire after a predetermined time.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the validation code includes data specific to the healthcare professional.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein a character of the digital certificate is altered as a function of the time between exposure and issuance of the digital certificate.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein patient exposure is detected through a sensor integrated into an insulin pump or sensor.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the at least one security protocol comprises requiring a patient code before the digital certificate is issued.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein a patient code must be coupled with a randomly-generated requestor code before the digital certificate is issued.

9. The method of claim 7, wherein the patient code is biometric.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the digital certificate can be revoked by the healthcare professional or if a predetermined event occurs.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein the predetermined event comprises body temperature elevation above a predetermined degree, wherein the body temperature measurement comprises: scanning a temperature detector across an artery; providing a peak temperature reading from plural readings obtained during scanning, wherein the temperature detector comprises a radiation sensor that views a target surface area; further comprising computing an internal body temperature as a function of ambient temperature and the peak temperature reading; and wherein the function includes a weighted difference of surface temperature and ambient temperature, the weighting including an approximation of h/pc at an artery where h is a heat transfer coefficient between a target surface and ambient, p is perfusion rate, and c is blood specific heat.

12. The method of claim 10, wherein the temperature detector is associated with a smart watch.

13. The method of claim 10, further comprising issuing a notice that a certificate has been issued or revoked.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein the notice is forwarded to a digital lock, whereby functionality of a key card or key code is modified depending on the contents of the notice.

15. A system configured for verifying a patient's immunity to at least one pathogen, comprising: a database comprising: at least one processor, a patient information module comprised of at least one processor configured to selectively receive at least one patient identifying characteristic; a pathogen exposure module comprised of at least one processor configured to receive data related to patient exposure to the at least one pathogen, the pathogen exposure module also configured to communicate with the patient information module; a verification module that receives input from a healthcare professional regarding patient immunity to the pathogen; a certificate generation module that communicates with the database upon compliance with predetermined security protocols; a notification module that communicates information from the database to an end user; and an input device that communicates with database.

16. The system of claim 15, wherein the monitoring module and/or certificate generation module is in communication with a door lock.

17. The system of claim 15, wherein the monitoring module and/or certificate generation module is in communication with an activity or access module that selectively allows or prevents an individual from accessing a structure or participating in an activity.

18. The system of claim 15, further comprising a monitoring module configured to communicate with at least one of the patient information module and the pathogen exposure module.

19. The system of claim 18, wherein the monitoring module is configured to communicate with a GPS device.

20. The system of claim 18, wherein the monitoring module is configured to communicate with a temperature monitoring device.

Description

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

[0038] The accompanying drawings, which are incorporated in and constitute a part of the specification, illustrate embodiments of the invention and together with the general description of the invention given above and the detailed description of the drawings given below, serve to explain the principles of these inventions.

[0039] FIG. 1 is a process flow of a method of one embodiment of the present invention.

[0040] FIG. 2 is a process flow of a method of another embodiment of the present invention.

[0041] FIG. 3 is an example communications/data processing network system that may be used in conjunction with embodiments of the present invention.

[0042] FIG. 4 is an example computer system that may be used in conjunction with embodiments of the present invention.

[0043] It should be understood that the drawings are not necessarily to scale. In certain instances, details that are not necessary for an understanding of the invention or that render other details difficult to perceive may have been omitted. It should be understood, of course, that the invention is not necessarily limited to the particular embodiments illustrated herein.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

[0044] FIG. 1 shows system implementation of one embodiment of the present invention. After virus exposure, a user obtains confirmation of infection either by physical examination by a healthcare professional or, more commonly, from a positive test. One of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that results of such tests may take hours to days. If infection is not confirmed, a certification is issued to the user. The certificate could be in the form of a QR code issued to user's mobile device, which may be scannable by government authorities, employers, guards, airline personnel, etc. Of course, other certificate forms, digital or physical, may be issued without departing from the scope of the invention.

[0045] If an infection is confirmed, relevant data is gathered, which will help healthcare providers and users appreciate how and when the exposure occurred. This data may be important to curb additional pathogen spread. For example, events that may have caused the exposure, the date of possible exposure, and symptoms that predicated the visit to the healthcare provider may be logged. This information is used to set a quarantine period so the condition can run its course. It is important to note that infection confirmation is not required. More specifically, if exposure is likely, healthcare experts or state protocols may treat the user as being exposed, wherein relevant data is collected.

[0046] After the quarantine period has passed, a healthcare provider will “clear” the patient, which may entail issuing an immunity certificate and/or patient-specific release code that is entered into the contemplated system and used to selectively generate an immunity certificate. The release code may be associated with a physician-specific identifier, patient-specific identifier, or combination thereof. If the physician or other qualified healthcare professional does not believe the patient is immune because of subsequent tests, or lingering symptoms, the certificate is not issued and the patient is returned to quarantine for a predetermined time. This clearance step can be conducted multiple times, wherein previously-issued certificates may be revoked if needed.

[0047] FIG. 2 shows the method of another embodiment of the present invention. Here, patient data is stored in a database that includes patient baseline data. The baseline data is associated with traditional medical records and may include age, weight, ethnic background, medical history, blood type, family history, etc. Coupled with the baseline data is data more relevant to the pathogen of concern. This “relevant data” may include prior infections, date of prior infection, recovery time, symptoms, treatment protocols, etc. It may also include vaccinations and immunity data because immunity may not last for more than a predetermined time.

[0048] The relevant data is also associated with more current, real-time data similar to what was described in FIG. 1. For example, “current data” is related to the patient's temperature, recent test results, etc. This sub-database may receive information from third-party exposure apps. Vital readings from the user's smart device or wearable may also be fed into the current database. In one embodiment, exposure data is detected through a sensor integrated into an insulin pump or blood glucose sensor. That is, one of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that along with a patient's blood sugar level, the presence of pathogens in a patient's blood system could be assessed. The vital data may include temperature, heart rate, etc. In one embodiment, user temperature is obtained by the methods described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,292,685 and 7,787,938, which are incorporated by reference herein. The current database may also draw information from social media websites, wherein posts by the user's friends are monitored to identify instances of exposure, which may be communicated to the patient. For example, if a user's friend indicates they were at a party and now have contracted COVID-19, such information is forwarded to the user or stored, wherein the user could be queried as to their whereabouts during the party. The user's internet search history could also be monitored to assess whether they are searching for information regarding symptoms of a pathogen of concern.

[0049] Upon an immunization or immunity inquiry from a third-party, the system will assess whether such inquiry has been authorized. Prior authorization can come from the user or may be mandated. If the inquiry was not approved, the certification of immunity is not issued. If the inquiry comes from the user, no preauthorization to access patient data and immunity validation is needed.

[0050] Next, the patient's health is validated, which entails drawing information from the patient database and may include input by a healthcare professional. The healthcare professional's approval may have been pre-obtained if, for example, a prior certificate has been issued. In some instances, prior certificates may become “stale” after a predetermined amount of time, wherein healthcare professionals may need to reassess patient data to re-recommend the issuance of a certificate. If the patient's health is validated, a certificate is issued as described above.

[0051] However, if the patient's immunity status is not validated, issuance of a new certificate is denied or a previously-issued certificate is revoked. Certificate revocation also happens in one embodiment of the present invention if predetermined parameters are exceeded. For example, the current database is continually updated with the user's temperature. If the user's temperature exceeds a predetermined level, the currently-issued certificate is revoked or flagged for further review. Certificate revocation may generate a notification to the user, the doctor, or other third parties, depending on user preferences. This will allow others that are part of the system to be quickly notified of possible exposure because of their friend's infection or reinfection.

[0052] As alluded to above, certificates can be temporal. Commonly, the certificate will sunset over time and expire. In another embodiment, the strength of the certificate may be apparent by a color code or other designation. For example, a green certificate would mean that the validation of immunity has occurred within a predetermined amount of time, e.g., six hours. The certificate color may change or fade over time based on various factors.

[0053] Embodiments of the present invention contemplate the issuance of notices when a certificate is issued, not issued, or revoked. Such information is sent to predefined interested parties. For example, the notification or certificate could be sent to a user's workplace or employment websites. The certificate can be used to unlock doors, wherein scanning of the certificate acts as a key.

[0054] Referring to FIG. 3, an example network system is provided that may be used in connection with the classification systems and methods disclosed herein. More specifically, FIG. 3 illustrates a block diagram of a system 100 that may use a web service connector to integrate an application with a web service. The system 100 includes one or more user computers 105, 110, and 115. The user computers 105, 110, and 115 may be general-purpose personal computers (including, merely by way of example, personal computers and/or laptop computers running various versions of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows™ and/or Apple Corp.'s Macintosh™ operating systems) and/or workstation computers running any of a variety of commercially-available UNIX™ or UNIX-like operating systems. These user computers 105, 110, 115 may also have any of a variety of applications, including, for example, database client and/or server applications, and web browser applications. Alternatively, the user computers 105, 110, and 115 may be any other electronic device, such as a thin-client computer, Internet-enabled mobile telephone, and/or personal digital assistant, capable of communicating via a network (e.g., the network 120 described below) and/or displaying and navigating web pages or other types of electronic documents. Although the exemplary system 100 is shown with three user computers, any number of user computers may be supported.

[0055] System 100 further includes a network 120. The network 120 may be any type of network familiar to those skilled in the art that can support data communications using any of a variety of commercially-available protocols, including without limitation TCP/IP, SNA, IPX, AppleTalk, and the like. Merely by way of example, the network 120 may be a local area network (“LAN”), such as an Ethernet network, a Token-Ring network and/or the like; a wide-area network; a virtual network, including without limitation a virtual private network (“VPN”); the Internet; an intranet; an extranet; a public switched telephone network (“PSTN”); an infra-red network; a wireless network (e.g., a network operating under any of the IEEE 802.11 suite of protocols, the Bluetooth™ protocol known in the art, and/or any other wireless protocol); and/or any combination of these and/or other networks.

[0056] The system 100 may also include one or more server computers 125, 130. One server may be a web server 125, which may be used to process requests for web pages or other electronic documents from user computers 105, 110, and 120. The web server can be running an operating system including any of those discussed above, as well as any commercially-available server operating systems. The web server 125 can also run a variety of server applications, including HTTP servers, FTP servers, CGI servers, database servers, Java servers, and the like. In some instances, the web server 125 may publish operations available as one or more web services.

[0057] The system 100 may also include one or more file and/or application servers 130, which can, in addition to an operating system, include one or more applications accessible by a client running on one or more of the user computers 105, 110, 115. The server(s) 130 may be one or more general-purpose computers capable of executing programs or scripts in response to the user computers 105, 110 and 115. As one example, the server may execute one or more web applications. The web application may be implemented as one or more scripts or programs written in any programming language, such as Java™, C, C#™ or C++, and/or any scripting language, such as Perl, Python, or TCL, as well as combinations of any programming/scripting languages. The application server(s) 130 may also include database servers, including without limitation those commercially available from Oracle, Microsoft, Sybase™, IBM™ and the like, which can process requests from database clients running on a user computer 105.

[0058] In some embodiments, an application server 130 may create web pages dynamically for displaying the development system. The web pages created by the web application server 130 may be forwarded to a user computer 105 via a web server 125. Similarly, the web server 125 may be able to receive web page requests, web services invocations, and/or input data from a user computer 105 and can forward the web page requests and/or input data to the web application server 130.

[0059] In further embodiments, the server 130 may function as a file server. Although for ease of description, FIG. 3 illustrates a separate web server 125 and file/application server 130, those skilled in the art will recognize that the functions described with respect to servers 125, 130 may be performed by a single server and/or a plurality of specialized servers, depending on implementation-specific needs and parameters.

[0060] The system 100 may also include a database 135. The database 135 may reside in a variety of locations. By way of example, database 135 may reside on a storage medium local to (and/or resident in) one or more of the computers 105, 110, 115, 125, 130. Alternatively, it may be remote from any or all of the computers 105, 110, 115, 125, 130, and in communication (e.g., via the network 120) with one or more of these. In a particular set of embodiments, the database 135 may reside in a storage-area network (“SAN”) familiar to those skilled in the art. Similarly, any necessary files for performing the functions attributed to the computers 105, 110, 115, 125, 130 may be stored locally on the respective computer and/or remotely, as appropriate. In one set of embodiments, the database 135 may be a relational database, such as Oracle 10i™, that is adapted to store, update, and retrieve data in response to SQL-formatted commands.

[0061] Referring to FIG. 4, an example computer system is provided that may be used in connection with the classification systems and methods disclosed herein. More specifically, FIG. 2 illustrates one embodiment of a computer system 200 upon which a web service connector or components of a web service connector may be deployed or executed. The computer system 200 is shown comprising hardware elements that may be electrically coupled via a bus 255. The hardware elements may include one or more central processing units (CPUs) 205; one or more input devices 210 (e.g., a mouse, a keyboard, etc.); and one or more output devices 215 (e.g., a display device, a printer, etc.). The computer system 200 may also include one or more storage device 220. By way of example, storage device(s) 220 may be disk drives, optical storage devices, solid-state storage device such as a random access memory (“RAM”) and/or a read-only memory (“ROM”), which can be programmable, flash-updateable and/or the like.

[0062] The computer system 200 may additionally include a computer-readable storage media reader 225; a communications system 230 (e.g., a modem, a network card (wireless or wired), an infra-red communication device, etc.); and working memory 240, which may include RAM and ROM devices as described above. In some embodiments, the computer system 200 may also include a processing acceleration unit 235, which can include a DSP, a special-purpose processor and/or the like.

[0063] The computer-readable storage media reader 225 can further be connected to a computer-readable storage medium, together (and, optionally, in combination with storage device(s) 220) comprehensively representing remote, local, fixed, and/or removable storage devices plus storage media for temporarily and/or more permanently containing computer-readable information. The communications system 230 may permit data to be exchanged with the network 220 and/or any other computer described above with respect to the system 200.

[0064] The computer system 200 may also comprise software elements, shown as being currently located within a working memory 240, including an operating system 245 and/or other code 250, such as program code implementing a web service connector or components of a web service connector. It should be appreciated that alternate embodiments of a computer system 200 may have numerous variations from that described above. For example, customized hardware might also be used and/or particular elements might be implemented in hardware, software (including portable software, such as applets), or both. Further, connection to other computing devices such as network input/output devices may be employed.

[0065] It should be appreciated that the methods described herein may be performed by hardware components or may be embodied in sequences of machine-executable instructions, which may be used to cause a machine, such as a general-purpose or special-purpose processor or logic circuits programmed with the instructions to perform the methods. These machine-executable instructions may be stored on one or more machine-readable mediums, such as CD-ROMs or other type of optical disks, floppy diskettes, ROMs, RAMs, EPROMs, EEPROMs, magnetic or optical cards, flash memory, or other types of machine-readable mediums suitable for storing electronic instructions. Alternatively, the methods may be performed by a combination of hardware and software.

[0066] Exemplary characteristics of embodiments of the present invention have been described. However, to avoid unnecessarily obscuring embodiments of the present invention, the preceding description may omit several known apparatus, methods, systems, structures, and/or devices one of ordinary skill in the art would understand are commonly included with the embodiments of the present invention. Such omissions are not to be construed as a limitation of the scope of the claimed invention. Specific details are set forth to provide an understanding of some embodiments of the present invention. It should, however, be appreciated that embodiments of the present invention may be practiced in a variety of ways beyond the specific detail set forth herein.

[0067] Modifications and alterations of the various embodiments of the present invention described herein will occur to those skilled in the art. It is to be expressly understood that such modifications and alterations are within the scope and spirit of the present invention, as set forth in the following claims. Further, it is to be understood that the invention(s) described herein is not limited in its application to the details of construction and the arrangement of components set forth in the preceding description or illustrated in the drawings. That is, the embodiments of the invention described herein are capable of being practiced or of being carried out in various ways. The scope of the various embodiments described herein is indicated by the following claims rather than by the foregoing description. And all changes which come within the meaning and range of equivalency of the claims are to be embraced within their scope. It is intended to obtain rights which include alternative embodiments to the extent permitted, including alternate, interchangeable and/or equivalent structures, functions, ranges or steps to those claimed, whether or not such alternate, interchangeable and/or equivalent structures, functions, ranges or steps are disclosed herein, and without intending to publicly dedicate any patentable subject matter.

[0068] The foregoing disclosure is not intended to limit the invention to the form or forms disclosed herein. In the foregoing Detailed Description, for example, various features of the invention are grouped together in one or more embodiments for the purpose of streamlining the disclosure. This method of disclosure is not to be interpreted as reflecting an intention that the claimed inventions require more features than expressly recited. Rather, as the following claims reflect, inventive aspects lie in less than all features of a single foregoing disclosed embodiment. Thus, the following claims are hereby incorporated into this Detailed Description, with each claim standing on its own as a separate preferred embodiment of the invention. Further, the embodiments of the present invention described herein include components, methods, processes, systems, and/or apparatus substantially as depicted and described herein, including various sub-combinations and subsets thereof. Accordingly, one of skill in the art will appreciate that would be possible to provide for some features of the embodiments of the present invention without providing others. Stated differently, any one or more of the aspects, features, elements, means, or embodiments as disclosed herein may be combined with any one or more other aspects, features, elements, means, or embodiments as disclosed herein.