Methods and apparatus for responding to request for clinical information

Abstract

A hub-spoke patient information service in which a patient's data can be obtained from a network of independent data sources through a centralized service. The hub of the service stores patient identification information and the spokes store the patient's clinical data. In a preferred embodiment, the spokes are independent sources (e.g. each spoke is generally unrelated to other spokes) and include hospitals, doctor offices, clinics, insurance companies, or other entities that store or track clinical data. Preferably, the data sources use a first authentication to properly identify or authentic the service. Once access is granted, the spoke sources are queried for the patient's data. In response, each data source provides the type of patient data available from the source. The user is shown the types of data available without generally showing the actual data. The user can then select the specific patient data to retrieve from the spoke sources.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 . A hub-spoke system for obtaining patient's clinical data, the hub-spoke system comprising:
 a set of spoke sources, wherein each spoke source in the set of spoke sources is configured to store clinical data of a patient associated with different types of clinical data; and   a hub communicatively coupled with the set of spoke sources, wherein the hub comprises a patient identification database configured to store identification information of the patient and is configured to:   authenticate a user to access the hub;
 query, upon receiving a request by the user, the set of spoke sources using a first authentication to authenticate the hub with the set of spoke sources; 
 retrieve, immediately after receiving the request, a first subset of clinical data of the patient available to the user from the set of spoke sources based on the first authentication; 
 provide a user interface that presents to the user a clinical data report comprising the first subset of clinical data, wherein the clinical data report lists the different types of clinical data, generally showing the subset of patient's clinical data falling within some, but not all, of the different types, wherein each type of clinical data is shown with an indicator indicating whether the type of clinical data is or is not available for the user to retrieve; 
 enable the user to select a type of clinical data to be retrieved from the set of spoke sources; 
 retrieve a second subset of the clinical data from at least one spoke source of the set of spoke sources using a second different authentication; and 
 provide a new user interface for the user by including the second subset of the clinical data in the clinical data report. 
   
     
     
         2 . The hub-spoke system of  claim 1 , wherein the hub is further configured to obtain patient authorization to retrieve the patient's clinical data. 
     
     
         3 . The hub-spoke system of  claim 1 , wherein the hub is further configured to disambiguate the patient's first subset of clinical data and the second subset of clinical data. 
     
     
         4 . The hub-spoke system of  claim 1 , wherein the plurality of different types of clinical data include at least one of a diagnosis, a treatment, a test result, and an outcome. 
     
     
         5 . The hub-spoke system of  claim 1 , wherein the patient's identification information includes a national patient identifier. 
     
     
         6 . The hub-spoke system of  claim 1 , wherein the hub is further configured to hide the patient's clinical data. 
     
     
         7 . The hub-spoke system of  claim 1 , wherein the hub is further configured to show the user a date corresponding to a time when the patient's clinical data became available. 
     
     
         8 . The hub-spoke system of  claim 1 , wherein the clinical data report lists the plurality of different types of clinical data without showing an identification of the spoke sources. 
     
     
         9 . The hub-spoke system of  claim 1 , wherein the hub is further configured to provide the user access to different levels of the patient's clinical data based on the first authentication. 
     
     
         10 . The hub-spoke system of  claim 9 , wherein the hub is further configured to enable the patient to authorize access to the different levels of the patient's clinical data. 
     
     
         11 . The hub-spoke system of  claim 1 , wherein the hub is further configured to provide a natural language interface to query the service for the patient's clinical data. 
     
     
         12 . The hub-spoke system of  claim 1 , wherein the hub is further configured to provide a language translation interface to display the patient's clinical data in a selected language. 
     
     
         13 . The hub-spoke system of claim.  1 , wherein the second authentication is different for each of the set of spoke sources. 
     
     
         14 . The hub-spoke system of  claim 1 , wherein the hub is further configured to encrypt the patient's clinical data. 
     
     
         15 . The hub-spoke system of  claim 1 , wherein the first authentication is common across the set of spoke sources. 
     
     
         16 . The hub-spoke system of  claim 1 , wherein the hub is further configured to charge the user a fee for accessing the service.