77 results about "Standard of care" patented technology

As shown in the drawings for purposes of illustration, a method and system for making physical modifications to intraocular targets is disclosed. In varying embodiments, the method and system disclosed herein provide many advantages over the current standard of care. Specifically, linear absorption facilitated photodecomposition and linear absorption facilitated plasma generation to modify intraocular tissues and synthetic intraocular lenses.

An automated system is described for presenting a patient with an online interactive personal health record (PHR) capable of delivering individualized alerts based on comparison of evidence-based standards of care to information related to the patient's actual medical care. A health care organization collects and processes medical care information, including clinical data relating to a patient in order to generate and deliver customized clinical alerts and personalized wellness alerts directly to the patient via the PHR. The PHR also solicits the patient's input for tracking of alert follow-up actions and allows the health care organization to track alert outcomes. Further embodiments include implementing a plurality of modules for providing real-time processing and delivery of clinical alerts and personalized wellness alerts to the patient via the PHR and to a health care provider via one or more health care provider applications, including disease management applications.

The current invention is directed to methods for reducing the cost of healthcare by improving the standard of care and by encouraging healthy behavior. Additionally, the methods of the current invention are designed to help improve clinical and economic outcomes through the principles of empowerment and accountability. The methods of the current invention provide financial incentives to both the patient and the medical practitioner in an interactive, web-based incentive system that creates appropriate and powerful checks and balances that motivate medical practitioners and patients to participate and to be adherent to beneficial performance standards. The methods of the current invention achieves the objectives of improved healthiness and better and more affordable healthcare by aligning the interests of medical providers, patients / consumers, and healthcare purchasers / payers in a win-win-win proposition. In the invention, purchasers / payers achieve lower healthcare consumption and costs by compensating medical providers and patients to declare compliance to beneficial performance standards on an intermediary's Internet application, and then having both parties confirm each other's compliance. The methods of the current invention incorporates evidence-based medicine treatment guidelines and content and other performance standards, and dispenses information therapy and other similar types of content through an Internet application or by other means to improve the standard of healthcare treatment and promote healthy behavior, which leads to better clinical outcomes and a reduction in the overall cost of healthcare.

The current invention is directed to methods for reducing the cost of healthcare by improving the standard of care and by encouraging healthy behavior. Additionally, the methods of the current invention are designed to help improve clinical and economic outcomes through the principles of empowerment and accountability. The methods of the current invention provide financial incentives to both the patient and the medical practitioner in an interactive, web-based incentive system that creates appropriate and powerful checks and balances that motivate medical practitioners and patients to participate and to be adherent to beneficial performance standards. The methods of the current invention achieves the objectives of improved healthiness and better and more affordable healthcare by aligning the interests of medical providers, patients / consumers, and healthcare purchasers / payers in a win-win-win proposition. In the invention, purchasers / payers achieve lower healthcare consumption and costs by compensating medical providers and patients to declare compliance to beneficial performance standards on an intermediary's Internet application, and then having both parties confirm each other's compliance. The methods of the current invention incorporates evidence-based medicine treatment guidelines and content and other performance standards, and dispenses information therapy and other similar types of content through an Internet application or by other means to improve the standard of healthcare treatment and promote healthy behavior, which leads to better clinical outcomes and a reduction in the overall cost of healthcare.

Life-threatening hepatotoxicity in the setting of acetaminophen overdose is due to depletion of glutathione (GSH), a vital cysteine-containing tripeptide that protects cells and organs against oxidant injury. Rapid administration of N-acetylcysteine (NAC), which provides the cysteine necessary to replenish the depleted GSH, is the standard of care for preventing injury in acetaminophen overdose. Beneficial effects of NAC treatment have also been demonstrated in respiratory, cardiovascular, endocrine and infectious and other diseases. In fact, over fifty randomized placebo-controlled trials conducted in diverse clinical settings document positive responses to NAC treatment. The present invention relates to cysteine / glutathione (GSH) deficiency as a previously unrecognized clinical entity that can complicate the course of commonly encountered diseases and methods of treatment of this generalized deficiency involving administering N-acetylcysteine (NAC) or a pharmaceutically acceptable salt or derivative to a subject in need thereof and monitoring the subjects appropriate glutathione blood levels as needed.

Disclosed are uses of immunotherapeutic compositions in combination with Standard of Care (SOC), or interferon therapy combined with anti-viral therapy, for the improved treatment of chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection and related conditions, including liver function. The compositions, kits and uses of the invention, as compared to the use of SOC therapy alone: improves the rate of early response to therapy as measured by early virologic markers (e.g., RVR and EVR), enlarges the pool of patients who will have sustained responses to therapy over the long term, offers shortened courses of therapy for certain patients, enables “rescue” of patients who are non-responders or intolerant to SOC therapy, improves liver function and / or reduces liver damage in patients, and enables the personalization of HCV therapy for a patient, which can result in dose sparing, improved patient compliance, reduced side effects, and improved long term therapeutic outcomes.

The present invention relates to a portable caregiver personal alert device to facilitate the improvement in the delivery of bedside patient care. The device assists caregivers in ensuring time-sensitive tasks are performed within a specific time frame and in a specific sequence to ensure efficiency, compliance with standard of care or regulation and patient comfort. The device of the present invention comprises a display, a microprocessor that monitors various tasks for multiple patients, and at least one user input feature and at least one alarm, capable of alerting a caregiver when it is time to perform the task. The device preferably includes various functions such as a bed assignment mode, a task mode for choosing applicable tasks associated with the needs of one or more bed numbers, and at least one clock for coordinating a plurality of alarms to one or more corresponding bed number and associated task.

The present invention discloses an automated system for presenting a patient with an online interactive personal health record (PHR) capable of delivering individualized alerts based on comparison of evidence-based standards of care to information related to the patient's actual medical care. A health care organization collects and processes medical care information, including clinical data relating to a patient in order to generate and deliver customized clinical alerts and personalized wellness alerts directly to the patient via the PHR. The PHR also solicits the patient's input for tracking of alert follow-up actions and allows the health care organization to track alert outcomes. Further embodiments include implementing a plurality of modules for providing real-time processing and delivery of clinical alerts and personalized wellness alerts to the patient via the PHR and to a health care provider via one or more health care provider applications, including disease management applications.

An electronic medical record system and method that enables easy entry and use of patient and other information. The system and method provides improvements in terms of features, speed, and ease of use. It includes the following steps: inputting patient information into an EMR system utilizing customizable templates; cross-referencing the information input with information databases, e.g., publicly available demographic-based information on the standards of care; and generating information from cross-referencing to provide user with recommendations for the patient (e.g., prescribe medication, order procedures, give immunization), if such a recommendation exists in the standards of care or is added by the user. The system and method utilize a computer. The present invention can be used to help practitioners avoid mistakes (e.g., forgetting standards of care), deliver a higher quality of care, measure performance, and proactively identify and contact patients who need a particular type of care.

The current standard of care for the treatment of allergic airway diseases include short and long acting beta-agonists, and inhaled or systemic corticosteroids, cromolyn and xanthines that all have the potential of detrimental side-effects. The present invention describes a new mechanistic protein-based therapeutic approach for the treatment of allergic airway disease and diseases associated with excessive Th2 pathology. The present invention relates to the surprising discovery that serum amyloid P (SAP) demonstrates a therapeutic affect in the treatment of hypersensitive disorders.

The invention provides methods for assessing the clinical status of a patient. In particular, the invention provides methods for identifying the presence of or likelihood of disease or disease recurrence. In practice, methods of the invention provide the ability to screen patients into one of three distinct clinical categories. Based upon measurement of clinically-relevant biomarkers in a sample obtained from a patient, the invention allows the unambiguous identification of patients who are not at risk for or do not have the relevant disease, the unambiguous identification of patients at increased risk or who have the disease; and the identification of patients who should receive standard of care treatment and / or monitoring. Use of the invention maximizes the number of patients who will receive accelerated intervention or monitoring and minimizes those patients who will receive unnecessary standard of care or accelerated intervention or monitoring.

A method and system to enable healthcare providers to utilize computers in chronic disease treatment, and more particularly to the management of chronic diseases in a manner that follows recognized standard-of-care recommendations (SOC) and links the patient to benefit opportunities such as medication samples and other benefits offered by pharmaceutical manufacturers and insurers

An apparatus, system, and method are disclosed for assessing and managing behavioral risk. The present invention maintains an episode module configured to collect behavioral risk data, a risk assessment module configured to allow a user to assess behavioral risk in relation to environmental factors, and a treatment module configured to generate recommended treatment options. Beneficially, such an apparatus, system, and method takes into account the dynamic nature of behavioral risk and provides tools to aid in estimating behavioral risk, managing and communicating behavioral risk, and documenting adherence to a standard of care.

A method and apparatus for identifying and contacting customers who have not responded to reminders to schedule a return appointment, or who are due for a visit according to accepted standards of care or office policies, but have not scheduled an appointment. A management database is queried to determine which customers have failed to respond to recall notices. The resulting list of customers may be sorted or filtered so that some customers are preferentially contacted first, based on expected value or office preferences. The list may also be sorted or filtered to fill specific providers' schedules first. Customer names and contact information are then presented to schedulers so that customers may be contacted. The time and date of each contact is automatically recorded along with the outcome of the contact. A customer name is presented to a scheduler only if the same name is not being simultaneously presented to other schedulers and that customer was not too recently contacted, so that redundant or too frequent contacts are avoided.

Methods and systems for use in continual self-monitoring of respiratory health and components for use therewith. The present methods and systems and their related components improve the standard of care in respiratory health self-monitoring by providing continual and unobtrusive monitoring that accounts for environmental, physiological and patient background data, and is capable of yielding an array of respiratory health-preserving responses. In some embodiments, the present methods and systems leverage ubiquitous handheld electronic devices [e.g. cell phones and personal data assistants (PDA)] for respiratory health self-monitoring.

Disclosed are methods of conducting and assessing the outcomes of a randomized controlled clinical trial. The method comprises the steps of: trialing, with respect to a first group of patients as an experimental group, an experimental treatment; and trialing, with respect to a second group of patients as a control group, at least first and second control therapies. The control therapies will have been previously validated or are a known standard of care. This method is described in relation to trialing and assessing implantable medical devices such as left ventricular assist devices (LVAD) but may be used for trialing and assessing other medical devices.

Compositions and methods for treating type 2 diabetes and its sequelae by intravenous or subcutaneous administration of formulations of synthesized curcumin (diferuloylmethane) and concomitantly one or more anti-diabetic agents to human subjects are disclosed herein. The composition of the present invention may be used to: (i) treat patients with diabetes in advanced stages with evidence of any or all encephalopathy, retinopathy, nephropathy, pancreatitis or neoplasias; (ii) treat patients with diabetic disease status without symptomatic or pathologic evidence of associated sequelae but requiring better glycemic control than that offered by standard of care anti-diabetic; and (iii) patients with objective signs or symptoms of sequelae from diabetes of anti-diabetic drugs. One three-drug combination of the present invention includes a slow release PLGA-curcumin and an oral gliptin (DPP-4)-inhibitor or any incretin-mimetic and metformin.

A computer-implemented method for facilitating delivery of patient-care in adherence with a standard of care clinical protocol is described. The method includes monitoring, by a computing device, patient information indicative of a clinical condition, based on a clinical protocol that comprises patient-care instructions that must be completed within a time period. The method further includes providing, by the computing device, the patient-care instructions to a user based on a result of the monitoring. The method also includes determining, by the computing device, adherence to the clinical protocol based on a result of at least one of the providing patient care instructions and the patient information; and for a determination that the clinical protocol has not been adhered to, providing a recommended action request that calibrates the patient care instructions in compliance with the clinical protocol.

A method and apparatus for improving call yields and reducing redundant calls while contacting patients who have not responded to reminders to schedule a return appointment, or who are due for a visit according to accepted standards of care or office policies, but have not scheduled an appointment. The patient reactivation system is queried for the next patient on the contact list, and queried again to find all patients sharing one or more phone numbers with this patient. Information required for contacting these patients to invite them to make an appointment is displayed. The user is presented one phone number at a time, and prompted to call this number and invite all listed patients to make an appointment. Results are collected, and when multiple patients are displayed, the program may prompt the user for clarification regarding which patients a given result applies to. Based on the results collected, the system determines whether or not to prompt the user to call the same patients again with other phone numbers, if available. Finally, the system analyzes the set of results collected in order to calculate follow-up call times for each patient. The system may keep separate follow-up call times for each phone number as well in order to further improve the patient experience.

A tool for monitoring a course of treatment for a patient, including standards of care making up the course of treatment. The tool permits tracking of multiple patients, their diagnoses, corresponding treatment regimens, and status of those regimens. Once a diagnosis is selected by a physician, the embodiment may list the various steps and / or actions undertaken in a recommended course of treatment for that diagnosis. Such steps / actions can include tests to be performed on the patient, drugs or prescriptions to be prescribed to the patient, physical activity to be undertaken by the patient, assessments to be made by a practitioner, environmental factors to be applied to the patient and so forth. The tool also lists particular standards of care for a given diagnosis, as well as which standards of care are incomplete. The tool may also present a patient's location.

A method and apparatus for identifying overdue patients using standard billing or other office management data, so that patients can be contacted and invited to make an appointment. The invention begins by querying the diagnosis codes for each visit from the billing or other encounter tables, and matching these with a set of target medical conditions requiring regular care. Procedure codes and encounter dates for past visits are queried for these patients, to determine when each patient was last seen, and what was done. These procedure codes are matched against a set of exam codes to determine last medical examination dates, and against a set of procedures known to resolve each medical condition. Each condition requiring regular care is matched against any resolving procedures, leaving a set of untreated conditions requiring regular care. Based on the date of the last exam or treatment and accepted standards of care or office policies, a due date is calculated for each patient. The management system is queried for each overdue patient to determine whether they already have an appointment scheduled in the future, or a recall notice recently sent or yet to be sent. Additional filtering based on administrative settings may also be done. Overdue patients requiring contact are then placed on the contact list.

A device for topical cooling of the nervous system via cooling of cerebrospinal fluid, or CSF, using a solid thermally conductive material. The solid thermally conductive material is coupled to a heat exchange apparatus. The thermally conductive material may be coupled to any catheter that is used in existing clinical standard of care for acute neuronal injuries, such as catheters used to monitor and relieve intracranial pressure. The thermally conductive material is a biocompatible and solid material, for instance, metals such as steel, tungsten and titanium, and non-metallic materials such as thermal diamond paste.

A method for providing a patient quality monitor may include receiving an identification of quality metrics associated with each of a plurality of health care conditions in which the quality metrics correspond to external standards of care for the respective health care conditions, extracting clinical patient quality data regarding activities corresponding to the quality metrics identified from a database, sorting the clinical patient quality data according to health care condition, and presenting compliance data on a dashboard display indicative of compliance with the quality metrics of a selected one of the health care conditions based on the sorted clinical patient quality data. A corresponding computer program product and apparatus are also provided.

The present invention relates to a portable caregiver personal alert device to facilitate the improvement in the delivery of bedside patient care. The device assists caregivers in ensuring time-sensitive tasks are performed within a specific time frame and in a specific sequence to ensure efficiency, compliance with standard of care or regulation and patient comfort. The device of the present invention comprises a display, a microprocessor that monitors various tasks for multiple patients, and at least one user input feature and at least one alarm, capable of alerting a caregiver when it is time to perform the task. The device preferably includes various functions such as a bed assignment mode, a task mode for choosing applicable tasks associated with the needs of one or more bed numbers, and at least one clock for coordinating a plurality of alarms to one or more corresponding bed number and associated task.

A system for monitoring and detecting the gait and other health related parameters of a user. One such parameter is monitoring of medication compliance and treatment session attendance done by a medication and liquid dispensing apparatus, which combines mechanical dispensing of medication. These parameters are provided in standard of care summaries to care providers, and are continually reported by the Optimum Recognition Blueprint as Standard of Care Summaries to care providers, as well as communicated to the end-user by the Virtual Caregiver Interface.

An Integrated Head and Neck Tandem-Bracing Device for Protective Helmets is introduced for hazardous activities such as hockey, American football, and others which require safety helmet protections against head impact trauma. The default vulnerability in such hazardous events is the lack of solid securitization of the neck of helmet wearers during such activities. The novel art is designed to protect the wearer against external impact injuries to the head but essentially to the extent the neck is solidly braced, in-tandem, between helmet and torso, at instance of an impinging impact. The novel device presumes optimal protections based upon safeguarding the integrity of the central nervous system: head, neck, and all vertebrae, the torso. This standard of care and the novel technology are integral for maintaining vital safety measures which have been unanticipated by conventional equipment.

A compact, nonelectric fluid dispenser for use in controllably dispensing beneficial agents such as propofol and dexmedetomidine hydrochloride to patients. The dispenser includes a fluid flow control assembly that precisely controls the flow of the medicament solution to the patient and embodies a collapsible drug container that can be filled in the field with the beneficial agents to be delivered to the patient. The unit-dose fluid dispenser of the invention is presented in a sterile and aseptic manner, where the drug has been pre-filled in the system, so that the practitioner cannot mistakenly give the wrong drug to the patient. The dispenser uniquely provides a more efficient medicament delivery system for procedure rooms, such as the endoscopy center, so that a greater number of patients can be treated per day at a higher standard of care with increased profits for the healthcare provider.

Methods and systems are described that implement evidence-based schemata in a health care system that embody practice guidelines and / or a standard of care. Physicians in the health care system agree to adhere to the practice guidelines. An insured patient assigns / subrogates the right to sue a physician malpractice to the health insurance carrier and receives medical care in compliance with the practice guidelines. The insured patient may be subject to incentives and disincentives to encourage compliance with the assignment / subrogation agreement. Shielding the physician from lawsuits will give the physician an incentive to abandon the practice of “defensive medicine.” This will significantly reduce the number of diagnostic tests and procedures and associated risks and expenses. Such a system can promote cost-efficiency, increase safety and provide fair remedies to patients who are injured, regardless of the cause.

A compact, nonelectric fluid dispenser for use in controllably dispensing beneficial agents such as propofol and dexmedetomidine hydrochloride to patients. The dispenser includes a fluid flow control assembly that precisely controls the flow of the medicament solution to the patient and embodies a collapsible, pre-filled drug container that contains the beneficial agents to be delivered to the patient. The unit-dose fluid dispenser of the invention is presented in a sterile and aseptic manner, where the drug has been pre-filled in the system, so that the practitioner cannot mistakenly give the wrong drug to the patient. The dispenser uniquely provides a more efficient medicament delivery system for procedure rooms, such as the endoscopy center, so that a greater number of patients can be treated per day at a higher standard of care with increased profits for the healthcare provider.

A system for monitoring and detecting the gait and other health related parameters of a user. One such parameter is monitoring of medication compliance and treatment session attendance done by a medication and liquid dispensing apparatus, which combines mechanical dispensing of medication. These parameters are provided in standard of care summaries to care providers, and are continually reported by the Optimum Recognition Blueprint as Standard of Care Summaries to care providers, as well as communicated to the end-user by the Virtual Caregiver Interface.