APPARATUS FOR & METHOD OF CREATING AND TRANSMITTING A PRESCRIPTION TO A DRUG DISPENSING LOCATION
A medical practitioner creates a prescription using a handheld portable device. The device uses a plurality of interactive screens that display information such as lists of drugs. The medical practitioner enters patient information and selects from the list the desired drug to be prescribed. The device gives the practitioner access to a drug database that may be limited by the drugs prescribable by the medical practitioner. Once a prescription is created, the practitioner can select a drug dispensing location and communicate the prescription to this location. The drug database and the drug dispensing locations may be stored in a removable memory.
This application is a continuation application of U.S. application Ser. No. 10/448,965, filed May 30, 2003, now U.S. Pat. No. 7,260,402, which claims the benefit under 35 USC 119(e) of U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 60/384,954, entitled “Apparatus For & Method Of Creating and Transmitting A Prescription To A Drug Dispensing Location,” filed Jun. 3, 2002. These related applications are incorporated herein by reference and made a part of this application. If any conflict arises between the disclosure of the invention in this continuation application and that in the related provisional application, the disclosure in this continuation application shall govern. Moreover, the inventor incorporates herein by reference any and all U.S. patents, U.S. patent applications, and other documents cited or referred to in this application or cited or referred to in the U.S. patents and U.S. patent applications incorporated herein by reference.
DEFINITIONSThe words “comprising,” “having,” and “including,” and other forms thereof, are intended to be equivalent in meaning and be open ended in that an item or items following any one of these words is not meant to be an exhaustive listing of such item or items, or meant to be limited to only the listed item or items.
BACKGROUND OF INVENTIONA point of care such as a doctor's office typically lies some distance from a drug dispensing location such as a pharmacy. A patient typically receives a prescription at the doctor's office and then travels to the pharmacy where the prescription is filled. Presently, a doctor creates a prescription by learning of the patient's symptoms, diagnosing the aliment, and then choosing drugs that will cure the aliment, or control its symptoms. Typically, a doctor hand writes a prescription. Frequently a pharmacist misinterprets the doctor's handwriting and the wrong drug is dispensed to the patient. Consumption of an improper drug can lead to patient illness and sometimes death. According to the 1999 Institute of Medicine Report, there were about one million serious medication errors per year in the United States because of illegible handwriting on prescriptions, misplaced decimal points, and missed drug interactions and allergies. Thus, there is a need to create prescriptions that are legible and accurate. There is also a need to communicate the prescription directly to the pharmacy.
SUMMARY OF INVENTIONThis invention has one or more features as discussed subsequently herein. After reading the following section entitled “DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF SOME EMBODIMENTS OF THIS INVENTION,” one will understand how the features of this invention provide its benefits. The benefits of this invention include, but are not limited to: creating and transmitting accurately a prescription from a prescriber (herein medical practitioner) to a remote drug dispensing location, providing a portable and convenient to use hand-held device for prescribing and transmitting prescriptions to a remote drug dispensing location, improving the accuracy of prescriptions by providing computerized means of creating and validating drug choices and by providing communication of the prescription directly from the medical practitioner to the drug dispensing location, and avoiding or at least significantly reducing human errors in connection with prescribing drugs.
Briefly, this invention includes a method of creating a prescription using a portable device. The portable device employs a graphical user interface enabling the medical practitioner to select one or more drugs from a list of drugs and transmit the selected drug or drugs as a prescription to a remote drug dispensing location. The list may be a drug database defined by the geographical location of the medical practitioner or the field of practice of the medical practitioner, or both. A list of drugs may be displayed on the portable device for viewing by the medical practitioner. The device enables the medical practitioner to select the desired prescribed drug from this list. Optionally, the list may be based on specific aliments or symptoms of a patient that the medical practitioner enters into the device that is programmed to recommend one or more drugs to be used to treat these symptoms. A medical practitioner creates a prescription by selecting drugs from the list and providing at least sufficient information to identify the patient. Other patient data that is considered confidential or private and access only by authorized personnel. For example, this patient data may be encrypted and only accessed by those having decrypting software, or the data may be in a secured data bank that can only be accessed using a password or other means for identifying authorized users. The device transmits the prescription to a computer, for example, and the computer transmits the prescription to the drug dispensing location using a global computer network, i.e., the Internet. Alternately, or in conjunction with the Internet, a care giving facility may use an intranet where private patient data is stored on the intranet's server.
One or more of the following steps are conducted in practicing the method of this invention:
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- (1) acquiring patient data,
- (2) acquiring patient aliment or symptoms,
- (3) diagnosing patient aliment or symptoms,
- (4) selecting drugs from a group of drugs defined by the aliments, or symptoms, or medical practitioner's geographical location of practice, or the medical practitioner's field of practice,
- (5) deriving a prescription from the selection,
- (6) communicating the prescription to the drug dispensing location,
- (7) querying whether patient information is available on an accessible database,
- (8) inputting patient information if the patient information is not available on the accessible database.
In one embodiment of the method of this invention, its steps include identifying patient symptoms, inputting the patient symptoms in to the device, providing a list of drugs associated with treating said symptoms, and selecting at least one drug from the list. In another embodiment of the method of this invention, its steps include identifying a patient aliment, inputting the patient aliment in to the device, providing a list of drugs associated with treating said aliment, and selecting at least one drug from the list.
Without limiting the scope of this invention as expressed by the claims that follow, some, but not necessarily all, of its features are:
One, this invention includes a system for creating a prescription by a medical practitioner and communicating this prescription to a remote drug dispensing location. The system may comprise a portable, hand held device, a communication link that transmits the selected drug prescription and patient information to a selected drug dispensing location, and a data receiver at the remote drug dispensing location that receives the selected drug and patient information. The medical practitioner may be certified to practice in a specific medical field and the listing of drugs may be limited to the practitioner's specific medical field. The system may include a node element in communication with the portable, hand held device that receives the selected drug prescription and patient information and transmits the drug prescription and patient information to the selected drug dispensing location. It may also include a computer that receives the selected drug prescription and patient information and transmits via a network the drug prescription and patient information to the selected drug dispensing location. The listing of a plurality of prescription drugs applicable to the specific medical field may be transmitted from a remote location to the device. One or more drug dispensing locations may be transmitted from these remote locations to the device. One or more drug dispensing locations may be selected based on a geographical region. The communication link may be hard wired or wireless, for example, a radio transmitter, an infrared transmitter, a wired transmitter, or an ultrasonic transmitter.
Two, the portable, hand held device of this invention may have (i) a display, (ii) a memory that may store (a) a listing of a plurality of prescription drugs, and (b) one or more drug dispensing locations, and (iii) a data input mechanism that enables the practitioner to identify a patient, select a drug dispensing location, select from the listing one or more of the listed prescription drugs to be dispensed at the selected drug dispensing location, and to enter specific dose for the selected prescription drug, The patient's name and other data such as previous prescriptions, aliments, symptoms, etc. may be stored in the memory of the portable, hand held device or at a remote, accessible location. The device may have a removable memory that stores the listing of a plurality of prescription drugs, one or more drug dispensing locations, or other useful information or data. The data input mechanism may be a keyboard. The portable, hand held device may have a plurality of interactive screens retained in the memory for displayed by the display screen. It may also include a selector device enabling the medical practitioner to move from one screen to another.
These features are not listed in any rank order nor is this list intended to be exhaustive.
DESCRIPTION OF DRAWINGSome embodiments of this invention, illustrating all its features, will now be discussed in detail. These embodiments depict the novel and non-obvious device, system and method of this invention as shown in the accompanying drawing, which is for illustrative purposes only. This drawing includes the following figures (Figs.), with like numerals indicating like parts:
Typically, a patient goes to a medical practitioner 10 at his or her office to have an aliment diagnosed, and to receive a prescription that is dispensed at a drug dispensing location, such as a pharmacy 12. The medical practitioner's office is usually some distance from the pharmacy 12. Referring to
In one preferred embodiment, such as the one shown in
In one preferred embodiment, the device 14 has an attachable keyboard 17. The keyboard 17 attaches to the device 14 through the input port 14c. Referring to
Referring to
In one embodiment, the drug databases do not contain a listing of all drugs produced, but rather, are limited to drugs available in the geographical region of the medical practitioner. For example, some drugs available in Europe are not available in the United States, and vice versa. Thus, a drug database designed for use in Europe may contain drugs that are not on a database for the United States.
In another embodiment, a drug database is limited to drugs available in a medical practitioner's field of practice. Typically, medical practitioners cannot prescribe drugs that are not associated with their practice. Limiting a drug database to those prescribable by the medical practitioner would eliminate confusion with other, non-prescribable drugs. Thus, drugs not prescribable by an individual medical practitioner are not available in the drug database.
In one embodiment, removable memory cards are used to store drug databases. Removable memory cards may also be used to store drug dispensing locations database. An example of the removable memory card 23 is the Microdrive produced by International Business Machines Corporation of Armonk, N.Y. There are specific memory cards 23 available based upon the medical practitioner's field of practice and his location of practice. Referring to
Referring to
In one embodiment, the device 14 displays a plurality of screens. The medical practitioner uses these screens to input, and select information that will be used to create a prescription. Typically, anyone of the displays is an interactive display where the medical practitioner uses, for example, a personal digital assistant (PDA) stylus pen, such as, the stylus pen produced by Palm, Inc. of Santa Clara, Calif.
Once the patient data has been acquired, either as a result of a query from a database, or entered manually, the patient data is displayed, as is shown in
The symptoms/medicine screen 70 allows the medical practitioner to enter in the field 72 information such as, the type of medicine the medical practitioner wishes to prescribe, and to enter in the field 74 the symptoms of the patient. The type of medicine may be, for example, an analgesic. Such an entry into the type of medicine field 72 is used to perform a search of the drug database for drugs that are in this category of the type of medicine entered. The symptoms field is used to search the drug database for drugs that either cure or treat the symptoms entered. The results of the drug search are then displayed, allowing the medical practitioner to select which drug he or she wishes to prescribe as depicted in
Entering the symptoms and/or type of medicine, is the first step in creating the prescription. Step indicators 76 shown in
The medical practitioner uses a dosing screen to enter dosing information for the selected drug. Dosing information provides the patient periodic instructions for taking the drug, and the amount of the drug that should be taken. Referring to
If the medical practitioner selects no button 100 in the tablet dosing screen 102, a syrup/liquid dosing screen 104 is displayed, as shown in
Referring to
Referring to
In
Referring to
The medical practitioner selects a pharmacy from the second pharmacy location screen 148 by selecting the one ok field button 152 corresponding to the desired pharmacy. After selecting the desired pharmacy, an information sent screen 154 is displayed, as shown in
It is contemplated that the device of this invention may also employ a wireless graphical interface connected to a remote computer. In this embodiment, the computer stores the drug and drug dispensing location databases. The device queries the databases stored on the computer to create a prescription and to select a drug dispensing location. The device is then used to instruct the computer to transmit the prescription to the drug dispensing location. It is also contemplated that the device may be connected to a printer that prints the prescription. A patient may then bring the printed prescription to a pharmacy to be filled.
In one alternate embodiment, instead using the removable memory card 23 to store private patient information, this private information may be stored in a database on a central server, for example on an intranet at a hospital. The private information may be encrypted so that only someone, such as the attending medical practitioner, having decrypting software may access this information. Encrypted private information may also be stored on a web server (internet) that the attending medical practitioner may access using decrypting software. This type of storage that uses file encryption maintains the security of this information. Such security may be needed in order to meet the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and to make the information more secure in case the portable device 14 is lost, stolen, or misused. In this embodiment, the memory card 23 will just store the drug databases and the drug dispensing databases.
In another alternate embodiment, as an optional feature, the portable device 14 may use a flexible, roll-away screen S (
The above presents a description of the best mode contemplated of carrying out the present invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains to make and use this invention. This invention is, however, susceptible to modifications and alternate constructions from that discussed above which are fully equivalent. Consequently, it is not the intention to limit this invention to the particular embodiments disclosed. On the contrary, the intention is to cover all modifications and alternate constructions coming within the spirit and scope of the invention as generally expressed by the following claims, which particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter of the invention:
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70. A system for creating a prescription by a medical practitioner communicating said prescription to a remote drug dispensing location, said system comprising
- a memory that stores a listing of a plurality of prescription drugs,
- a data input mechanism that enables the practitioner to enter information identifying a patient, select a drug dispensing location to dispense prescription drugs to a patient, access the listing and select from the listing one or more of the listed prescription drugs to be dispensed, and to enter a specific dose for said selected prescription drug,
- a communication link that transmits said selected drug prescription and patient information to a selected drug dispensing location, and
- a data receiver at the remote drug dispensing location that receives said selected drug and patient information.
71. The system of claim 70 further comprising a computer that receives said selected drug prescription and patient information and transmits, via a network, said drug prescription and patient information to said selected drug dispensing location.
72. The system of claim 70 where the medical practitioner is certified to practice in a specific medical field and said listing of drugs is limited to said practitioner's specific medical field.
73. The system of claim 72 where said listing of a plurality of prescription drugs applicable to said specific medical field is transmitted from a remote location.
74. The system of claim 70 where said listing of drugs is limited to drugs available for prescription in a geographical region where the medical practitioner practices medicine.
75. The system of claim 70 where said listing of drugs is limited to drugs for treating symptoms of a patient.
76. The system of claim 70 where said listing of drugs is limited to drugs for treating an aliment of a patient.
77. The system of claim 70 where said one or more drug dispensing locations are selected based on a geographical region.
78. The system of claim 70 where said communication link comprises a radio transmitter, an infrared transmitter, a wired transmitter, or an ultrasonic transmitter.
80. A method of creating a prescription by a medical practitioner and communicating said prescription to a remote drug dispensing location, comprising the steps of
- inputting data relating to a patient into a computer system,
- storing in a memory a listing of a plurality of prescription drugs, selecting one or more of the listed prescription drugs and identifying a remote drug dispensing location at which the prescription drugs are to be dispensed to an identified patient,
- transmitting said selected drug prescription and information identifying a patient to a selected drug dispensing location, and
- receiving a selected drug prescription and patient information at the remote drug dispensing location.
81. The method of claim 80 where the medical practitioner is certified to practice in a specific medical field and said listing of a plurality of prescription drugs is limited to said practitioner's specific medical field.
82. The method of claim 81 where said listing of drugs applicable to said specific medical field is transmitted from a remote location.
83. The method of claim 80 where said listing of one or more drug dispensing locations is transmitted from a remote location.
84. The method of claim 80 where said listing of drugs is limited to drugs available for prescription in a geographical region where the medical practitioner practices medicine.
85. The method of claim 80 where said listing of drugs is limited to drugs used to treat a specific symptom of a patient.
86. The method of claim 80 where said listing of drugs is limited to drugs used to treat a specific aliment of a patient.
87. The method of claim 80 including the step of displaying (a) said listing of a plurality of prescription drugs applicable, (b) a listing of patient information, and (c) a listing of one or more drug dispensing locations and selecting from said listings one or more of the drugs listed prescription drugs and the identity of the patient to receive the prescribed drugs, and the location of the drug dispensing location.
88. A method of creating a prescription by a medical practitioner and communicating said prescription and patient information to a remote drug dispensing location, said method comprising:
- (a) providing a computer system that enables said medical practitioner to (i) acquire information identifying a patient, and (ii) select drugs from a list of drugs;
- (b) creating a prescription from said selected drugs; and
- (c) communicating said prescription and patient information to said remote drug dispensing location.
89. The method of claim 88 where acquiring patient information comprises the steps of querying whether said patient information is available on an accessible database, and inputting the patient information if the patient information is not available on said accessible database.
90. The method of claim 88 where selecting drugs from a list of drugs comprises the steps of electronically coupling a database of said list of drugs to said system, communicating with said database; and selecting at least one drug from said database.
91. The method of claim 88 where selecting drugs from a list of drugs includes communicating with a computer that stores said list and selecting drugs from said list.
92. The method of claim 88 where of selecting drugs from a list of drugs comprises the steps of identifying patient symptoms, inputting said patient symptoms in to said system, providing a list drugs of drugs associated with treating said symptoms, and selecting at least one drug from said list.
93. The method of claim 88 where selecting drugs from a list of drugs defined by the medical practitioner's field of practice comprises the steps of identifying a patient aliment, inputting said patient aliment into said system, providing a list drugs of drugs associated with treating said aliment; and selecting at least one drug from said list.
94. The method of claim 88 where said step of communicating said prescription and patient information to said drug dispensing location comprises the steps of communicating with a computer that stores a database of drug dispensing locations, selecting a drug dispensing location from said database, and communicating said prescription to said drug dispensing location.
95. The method of claim 88 where said drug dispensing location is selected from a database of drug dispensing locations and where said database is selected based on geographical region.
96. The method of claim 88 where the medical practitioner is certified to practice in a specific medical field and said listing of drugs is limited to said practitioner's specific medical field.
97. The method of claim 88 where said listing of drugs is limited to drugs available for prescription in a geographical region where the medical practitioner practices medicine.
Type: Application
Filed: Aug 16, 2007
Publication Date: Mar 20, 2008
Inventor: Omar Ahmed (Rancho Cucamonga, CA)
Application Number: 11/840,017
International Classification: G06Q 50/00 (20060101);