Information management and communications system and method for communication with patients

Abstract

An information management and communications system and method for communication with patients. The system includes a graphical user interface on which a healthcare provider interactively builds an entire monitoring call dialog tailored for an individual patient by selecting multiple call objects including multiple health assessment questions from a plurality of health assessment questions, editing one or more call objects to further tailor the monitoring call dialog for the patient, positioning and configuring the call objects and thereby create and configure a sequence of elements of the monitoring call dialog, and save the entire monitoring call dialog to a storage mechanism. The system further includes an automated interactive patient response system that audibly communicates the entire monitoring call dialog to the patient, enables the patient to provide responses to the multiple health assessment questions, and records the responses of the patient in the storage mechanism.

1 . An information management and communications system for communications with a population of patients and providing automated interactive health assessment monitoring of the population of patients that enables healthcare providers to selectively provide healthcare and wellness management tailored for an individual patient within the population of patients, the system comprising:
 a nontransitory storage mechanism of a computer network system and on which is stored a plurality of call objects, the call objects comprising a plurality of health assessment questions and at least one message chosen from the group consisting of authentication messages, greeting messages, announcements, closing messages, conditional announcements, third-party announcements, interactive prompts, notices, disclaimers, and conditional messages;   a graphical user interface of the computer network system and on which a healthcare provider interactively builds an entire monitoring call dialog that is audible and tailored for an individual patient by using the graphical user interface to:
 select multiple call objects from the plurality of call objects including selecting the at least one message and selecting multiple health assessment questions from the plurality of health assessment questions; 
 edit at least some of the multiple call objects including the multiple health assessment questions thereof and thereby further tailoring the monitoring call dialog for the individual patient; 
 position and configure the multiple call objects and the multiple health assessment questions thereof and thereby creating and configuring a sequence of elements of the monitoring call dialog and thereby further tailoring the monitoring call dialog for the individual patient; and 
 save the entire monitoring call dialog to the storage mechanism; and 
   an automated interactive patient response system that audibly communicates the entire monitoring call dialog to the individual patient, enables the individual patient to provide responses to the multiple health assessment questions, and records the responses of the individual patient in the storage mechanism;   wherein the computer network system containing the storage mechanism and the graphical user interface provides secure health assessment monitoring of the individual patient, and enables a healthcare provider to access the responses of the individual patient stored on the storage mechanism, and modify the monitoring call dialog by editing at least one of the multiple health assessment questions and thereby further tailoring the monitoring call dialog to selectively provide healthcare and wellness management of the individual patient.   
     
     
         2 . The information management and communications system of  claim 1 , wherein the graphical user interface enables a healthcare provider to access the responses of the individual patient stored on the storage mechanism. 
     
     
         3 . The information management and communications system of  claim 1 , wherein the graphical user interface is connected to the storage mechanism via the Internet. 
     
     
         4 . The information management and communications system of  claim 1 , wherein the graphical user interface further enables:
 accessing of the storage mechanism by a healthcare provider;   selecting by the healthcare provider additional health assessment questions from the plurality of health assessment questions after the healthcare provider has accessed the responses of the individual patient stored on the storage mechanism; and then   communicating the selected additional health assessment questions to the individual patient.   
     
     
         5 . The information management and communications system of  claim 1 , wherein for at least one of the plurality of call objects the graphical user interface further enables recording by a healthcare provider custom media in the form of a message. 
     
     
         6 . The information management and communications system of  claim 1 , wherein the plurality of call objects stored on the storage mechanism comprise at least one of each of the authentication messages, the greeting messages, the announcements, the closing messages, the conditional announcements, the third-party announcements, the interactive prompts, the notices, the disclaimers, and the conditional messages. 
     
     
         7 . The information management and communications system of  claim 1 , wherein the graphical user interface further enables automatic contacting of the individual patient by a healthcare provider with the automated interactive patient response system. 
     
     
         8 . The information management and communications system of  claim 7 , wherein the graphical user interface further enables scheduling by a healthcare provider when the individual patient is contacted with the automated interactive patient response system. 
     
     
         9 . The information management and communications system of  claim 1 , wherein the computer network system performs a risk evaluation based on the responses of the individual patient by aggregating relative risk factors obtained by comparing the responses of the individual patient to comparative measures, stores the risk evaluation on the storage mechanism, and enables a healthcare provider to access the risk evaluation stored on the storage mechanism, and the graphical user interface enables a healthcare provider to access the risk evaluation stored on the storage mechanism. 
     
     
         10 . The information management and communications system of  claim 9 , wherein the system is provider-hosted and the storage mechanism and portions of the computer network system that perform and store the risk evaluation are components of a server offsite from the graphical user interface. 
     
     
         11 . The information management and communications system of  claim 9 , wherein the computer network system further comprises a predictive model for predicting an impending medical event of the individual patient, the computer network system performing the risk evaluation by evaluating the responses of the individual patient against the predictive model and thereby identifying any elevated risk levels of the individual patient by ranking the elevated risk levels against other patients within the population of patients, the computer network system storing the predicted impending medical event on the storage mechanism and enabling accessing by a healthcare provider the predicted impending medical event stored on the storage mechanism. 
     
     
         12 . The information management and communications system of  claim 9 , wherein the computer network system further comprises:
 predictive models for a plurality of diseases and conditions; and   decision support tools used by the computer network system for performing the risk evaluation by evaluating at least one the responses of the individual patient against at least one of the predictive models for at least one of the plurality of diseases and conditions and thereby identifying any elevated risk levels of the individual patient, ranking the risk levels within the population of patients, and displaying the ranking of the risk levels to a healthcare provider.   
     
     
         13 . A method for managing information and communications with a population of patients and providing automated interactive health assessment monitoring of the population of patients and thereby selectively provide healthcare and wellness management tailored for any individual patient within the population of patients, the method comprising:
 storing on a nontransitory storage mechanism of a computer network system a plurality of call objects comprising a plurality of health assessment questions and a plurality of messages chosen from the group consisting of authentication messages, greeting messages, announcements, closing messages, conditional announcements, third-party announcements, interactive prompts, notices, disclaimers, and conditional messages;   a healthcare provider using a graphical user interface of the computer network system and thereby interactively building an entire monitoring call dialog that is audible and tailored for an individual patient by using the graphical user interface to:
 select multiple call objects from the plurality of call objects including selecting multiple messages from the plurality of messages and multiple health assessment questions of the plurality of health assessment questions; 
 edit at least some of the multiple call objects including the multiple health assessment questions thereof and thereby further tailoring the entire monitoring call dialog for the individual patient; 
 position and configure the multiple call objects and the multiple health assessment questions thereof and thereby creating and configuring a sequence of elements of the monitoring call dialog and thereby further tailoring the monitoring call dialog for the individual patient; and 
 save the entire monitoring call dialog to the storage mechanism; 
   audibly communicating the entire monitoring call dialog to the individual patient with an automated interactive patient response system;   the individual patient providing responses to the multiple health assessment questions with the automated interactive patient response system;   recording the responses of the individual patient in the storage mechanism;   accessing the responses of the individual patient stored on the storage mechanism; and then   modifying the monitoring call dialog by editing at least one of the multiple health assessment questions and thereby further tailoring the monitoring call dialog to selectively provide healthcare and wellness management of the individual patient.   
     
     
         14 . The method of  claim 13 , wherein the computer network system is a provider-hosted computer network system comprising a server offsite from the graphical user interface, and the graphical user interface is connected to the storage mechanism and the server via the Internet. 
     
     
         15 . The method of  claim 13 , the method further comprising:
 predicting an impending medical event of the individual patient by evaluating the responses of the individual patient against a predictive model and thereby identifying any elevated risk levels of the individual patient;   ranking the elevated risk levels against other patients within the population of patients;   storing the predicted impending medical event on the storage mechanism; and   a healthcare provider accessing the predicted impending medical event stored on the storage mechanism.   
     
     
         16 . The method of  claim 13 , the method further comprising:
 using decision support tools and thereby evaluating the responses of the individual patient against predictive models for at least one of a plurality of diseases and conditions and thereby identifying any elevated risk levels of the individual patient;   ranking the risk levels within the population of patients; and   displaying the ranking of the risk levels to the healthcare provider.   
     
     
         17 . The method of  claim 13 , the method further comprising:
 scheduling a frequency and duration for when the monitoring call dialog is audibly communicated to the individual patient with the automated interactive patient response system; and   audibly communicating the monitoring call dialog to the individual patient with the automated interactive patient response system according to the scheduling step.   
     
     
         18 . The method of  claim 13 , the method further comprising:
 performing a risk evaluation based on the responses of the individual patient by aggregating relative risk factors obtained by comparing the responses of the individual patient to comparative measures;   storing the risk evaluation on the storage mechanism; and   the healthcare provider using the graphical user interface to access the risk evaluation stored on the storage mechanism.   
     
     
         19 . The method of  claim 18 , the method further comprising:
 using a predictive model to predict an impending medical event of the individual patient;   performing the risk evaluation by evaluating the responses of the individual patient against the predictive model and thereby identifying any elevated risk levels of the individual patient, by ranking the elevated risk levels against other patients within the population of patients;   storing the predicted impending medical event on the storage mechanism; and   the healthcare provider accessing the predicted impending medical event stored on the storage mechanism.   
     
     
         20 . The method of  claim 18 , the method further comprising:
 using decision support tools to perform the risk evaluation by evaluating at least one the responses of the individual patient against at least one of a plurality of predictive models for at least one of a plurality of diseases and conditions;   identifying any elevated risk levels of the individual patient;   ranking the risk levels within the population of patients; and   displaying the ranking of the risk levels to the healthcare provider.