TECHNICAL FIELD

The present disclosure relates to the field of medical services and healthcare. In particular  the present disclosure relates to a system and a method to prevent medical malpractices adopted by various healthcare facilities.

BACKGROUND

The medical field has seen major technological advancements in the recent past. Along with the benefits  the advancement opens up opportunities for healthcare institutions to misuse the technology. Many healthcare institutions like hospitals and medical clinics are engaged in imparting improper medical care for the purpose of making money. Improper medical care includes providing wrong medical services to the patient  providing medical services which are unnecessary for the patient etc.

One of the major medical malpractices being followed by healthcare institutions includes illegal sex determination of fetus followed by female feticide. In many countries  several acts have been enacted to check female feticide by the Government. Further  several measures have been undertaken to create awareness against illegal determination of sex and female feticide. However  these measures do not have much impact to remove these social evils from society.

Further  the healthcare institutions advise the patient to undergo operations or surgeries which is actually not required. The hospitals perform caesarean delivery when normal delivery was possible. Further  the patients are advised for organ transplant when the existing organ of the patient is normal and healthy. Presently  there is no system to check and curb these malpractices being carried out by the healthcare institutions.

Therefore  there is a need for a system and a method for preventing the medical malpractices to overcome such problems.

SUMMARY OF THE DISCLOSURE

The shortcomings of the prior art are overcome and additional advantages are provided through the present disclosure. Additional features and advantages are realized through the techniques of the present disclosure. Other embodiments and aspects of the disclosure are described in detail herein and are considered a part of the claimed disclosure.

A method to prevent medical malpractices is disclosed as an aspect of the present disclosure. The method comprises steps of receiving information by a server from one or more computing devices. The information comprises at least one of medical report associated to a predetermined medical service provided to a patient and details of the medical service provider providing the medical service. Based on received information  the processor associated with the server performs at least one of the following: Determining presence of the medical report and verifying the medical service provided by the medical service provider to the patient  thereby marking the medical service provider in a suspicion list  when result of the verification is negative; determining absence of the medical report and marking the medical service provider in the suspicion list; determining absence of the medical report and the name of the medical service provider and marking the patient in a barred list. Further  the method comprises transmitting at least one of the suspicion list and the barred list to one or more organizations at predetermined regular intervals  wherein the suspicion list and the barred list are stored in a memory unit of the server.

In one embodiment  the present disclosure relates to a system to prevent medical malpractices. The system comprises a server to receive information from one or more computing devices. The information comprises at least one of medical report associated to a predetermined medical service provided to a patient and details of the medical service provider providing the medical service. The server comprises a processor  which in response to the information received by the server  is configured to perform at least one of determining presence of the medical report and verifying the medical service provided by the medical service provider to the patient. Thereby  marking the medical service provider in a suspicion list  when result of the verification is negative; determine absence of the medical report and mark the medical service provider in the suspicion list; determine absence of the medical report and the name of the medical service provider  and mark the patient in a barred list. The system further comprises a communication module communicatively connected to the processor for transmitting at least one of the suspicion list and the barred list to one or more organizations at predetermined regular intervals. A memory unit communicatively coupled to the processor to store the suspicion list and the barred list.

In one embodiment  the present disclosure relates to a processor configured to receive information from a server and perform at least one of determining presence of a medical report in the received information and verifying the medical service provided by the medical service provider to the patient  thereby marking the medical service provider in a suspicion list  when result of the verification is negative; determining absence of the medical report in the received information and marking the medical service provider in the suspicion list; determining absence of the medical report and the name of the medical service provider in the received information  thereby marking the patient in a barred list. The processor further provides the suspicion list and the barred list for transmission to one or more organizations at predetermined regular intervals. The information comprises at least one of medical report associated to a predetermined medical service provided to a patient and details of the medical service provider performed the medical service.

In one embodiment  the present disclosure relates to a method to prevent medical malpractices. The method comprises receiving delivery information by a server upon childbirth by a patient. The delivery information comprises at least one of type of delivery  a delivery report and name of the medical service provider performing the delivery. Then  the method comprises comparing the received delivery information with an expected type of delivery by a processor associated with the server. Upon determining the comparison to be negative  the processor performs at least one of processing the delivery report to verify reason for the type of delivery  marking the medical service provider in a suspicion list when result of the verification is negative. Further  the method comprises transmitting the suspicion list to one or more organizations at predetermined regular intervals  wherein the expected type of delivery and the suspicion list are stored in a memory unit associated with the server.

A system to prevent medical malpractices is disclosed as an aspect of the present disclosure. The system comprises a server to receive delivery information from one or more computing devices upon child birth by a patient. The delivery information comprises at least one of type of delivery  a delivery report and name of the medical service provider performing the delivery. The server comprises a processor  which  in response to the delivery information received by the server  performs at least one of comparing the received delivery information with an expected type of delivery; performing  upon determining the comparison to be negative  at least one of processing the delivery report to verify reason for the type of delivery; and marking the medical service provider in a suspicion list when result of the verification is negative. Further  the system comprises a communication module communicatively connected to the processor for transmitting the suspicion list to one or more organizations at predetermined regular intervals. Further  a memory unit is communicatively coupled to the processor to store the expected type of delivery and the suspicion list.

In an embodiment  the present disclosure relates to a processor to receive delivery information from a server and perform at least one of comparing the received delivery information with an expected type of delivery. Upon determining the comparison to be negative  performing at least one of processing the delivery report to verify reason for the type of delivery; marking the medical service provider in a suspicion list when result of the verification is negative; and providing the suspicion list for transmission to one or more organizations at predetermined regular intervals  wherein the delivery information comprises at least one of type of delivery  a delivery report and name of the medical service provider performing the delivery.

The aforementioned and other features and advantages of the disclosure will become further apparent from the following detailed description of the presently preferred embodiments  read in conjunction with the accompanying drawings. The detailed description and drawings are merely illustrative of the disclosure rather than limiting  the scope of the disclosure being defined by the appended claims and equivalents thereof.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The features of the present disclosure are set forth with particularity in the appended claims. The embodiments of the disclosure itself  together with further features and attended advantages  will become apparent from consideration of the following detailed description  taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings. One or more embodiments of the present disclosure are now described  by way of example only  with reference to the accompanied drawings wherein like reference numerals represent like elements and in which:

Fig. 1 illustrates an exemplary block diagram of a system for preventing medical malpractices in accordance with the present disclosure;

Fig. 2 is an exemplary flowchart illustrating a method of preventing medical malpractices in accordance with first embodiment of the present disclosure; and

Fig. 3 is an exemplary flowchart illustrating a method of preventing medical malpractices in accordance with second embodiment of the present disclosure.

Fig. 4 illustrates an exemplary patient list  suspicion list and barred list stored in the memory unit in accordance with an embodiment of the present disclosure; and

Fig. 5 illustrates modules involved in analyzing medical report in accordance with an embodiment of the present disclosure.

The figures depict embodiments of the disclosure for purposes of illustration only. One skilled in the art will readily recognize from the following description that alternative embodiments of the structures and methods illustrated herein may be employed without departing from the principles of the disclosure described herein.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

The foregoing has broadly outlined the features and technical advantages of the present disclosure in order that the detailed description of the disclosure that follows may be better understood. Additional features and advantages of the disclosure will be described hereinafter which form the subject of the claims of the disclosure. It should be appreciated by those skilled in the art that the conception and specific embodiment disclosed may be readily utilized as a basis for modifying or designing other structures for carrying out the same purposes of the present disclosure. It should also be realized by those skilled in the art that such equivalent constructions do not depart from the spirit and scope of the disclosure as set forth in the appended claims. The novel features which are believed to be characteristic of the disclosure  both as to its organization and method of operation  together with further objects and advantages will be better understood from the following description when considered in connection with the accompanying figures. It is to be expressly understood  however  that each of the figures is provided for the purpose of illustration and description only and is not intended as a definition of the limits of the present disclosure.

Fig. 1 illustrates an exemplary block diagram of a system for preventing medical malpractices in accordance with the present disclosure. The figure 1 includes a server 110 connected by a network 120 to one or more communication devices 130. In the illustrated embodiment  the computing device 130 may comprise an end-user terminal such as desktop  laptop  mobile phone  Personal Digital Assistant (PDA)  smart phones  tablet computer  palmtop and any other portable or fixed computing device. The computing device may be operated by one or more health workers. The network 120 may comprise a public network e.g.  the Internet  World Wide Web  etc. or private network e.g.  local area network (LAN)  etc. or combinations thereof e.g.  a virtual private network  LAN connected to the Internet  etc. Furthermore  the network 120 need not be a wired network only  and may comprise wireless network elements as known in the art. The network 120 enables data transfer or communication between server 120  computing device 130 and organization 170.

The server 110 comprises a processor 140  a memory unit 150 and a communication module 160. The memory unit 150 stores various application software including programs  which are executed by processor 140. Further  the memory unit 150 stores a list of patient details  a suspicion list and a barred list as illustrated in Fig. 4. The suspicion list comprises names of one or more medical service providers who are suspected of performing illegal medical services. The barred list comprises name of one or more patients who are involved in illegal medical practices. The communication module 160 enables communication between the server 110  the computing device 130 and the organization 170. In the illustrated embodiment  the organizations 170 comprise at least one of healthcare ministry  various insurance companies  law and order maintaining authorities  social enterprises  Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) etc.

Fig. 2 is an exemplary flowchart illustrating a method of preventing medical malpractices in accordance with first embodiment of the present disclosure. In an embodiment  the medical malpractice is considered to be female feticide. The record of patients is maintained in the memory unit 150 of the server 110. In an exemplary embodiment  the patient is a pregnant woman. A person skilled in the art would understand that the patient could be any person suffering from some ailment or has a medical condition to be treated. In the illustrated embodiment  during the course of pregnancy  the details of each patient and the associated medical service provider are transmitted to the server 110 using the computing device 130. The server 110 stores the details of the patient and associated medical server in the memory unit 150 for future reference. In an embodiment  the medical service provider can be a hospital  medical clinic  primary care center  nursing homes or any institution providing medical care.

Subsequently  when a fetus of the patient is aborted  one or more information regarding the patient is retrieved at step 210. In an embodiment  the information comprises at least one of a medical report associated to a predetermined medical service provided to a patient and name of the medical service provided providing the medical service. In an embodiment  the health worker operating the computing device 130 determines the abortion of the fetus and checks for the availability of the ultrasound report at step 220. The medical report can be in free text or any other digital format. Further  the ultrasound report may be retrieved from the patient or the medical service provider. In case the ultrasound report is available  the report is scanned by the computing device 130 and transmitted through the network 120 to the server 110. The ultrasound report is then provided to the processor 140 configured in the server 110 for verification at step 230. The verification process comprises determining the medical service provided to the patient to be matching with medical service predicted by a decision support module 530. Further  the processor 140 analyzes the ultrasound report to determine the medical condition of the fetus of the patient and to check for any abnormality in the fetus and the patient.

As illustrated in Fig. 5  the processing of the medical report comprises converting the scanned medical report is converted into a format understandable by computer for e.g.: a machine readable format or an editable format. In an embodiment  the medical report can be converted into machine readable format by performing an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) processing 510. In another embodiment  other character recognition methods like Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR) and natural handwriting recognition can be used based on the type of report. The medical report converted to a computer readable format is then provided natural language processing (NLP) module 520. The NLP module extracts meaningful medical phrases from the medical report for further processing.

The processor further comprises an analysis module to analyze the ultrasound report to determine medical meaning of the information. In an embodiment  the analysis module can be a decision support system. The decision support system can be configured on at least one of the computing device 130 and the processor 140. The decision support module/system 530 extracts one or more medical parameters are extracted from the information for predicting the medical service to be performed on the patient. The information may comprise at least one of a medical report associated to a predetermined medical service provided to a patient and name of the medical service provided providing the medical service.

An example of decision support system is clinical decision support systems (CDSS) which can analyze and infer the medical condition of the patient by using a knowledge base which applies a set of predefined rules to patient medical report using an inference engine. In an alternate embodiment  the clinical decision support system can analyze the medical report by relying on natural language processing in absence of knowledge base.

In case the processor  upon analyzing the ultrasound report  determines that there was no abnormality in the fetus and the patient and the fetus were normal  and still the baby was aborted  result of the verification is marked as negative. When the verification is negative  the medical service provider is added to the suspicion list stored in the memory unit 150 at step 240. Also  the patient is added to the barred list stored in the memory unit 150 at step 270.

In an alternate embodiment  upon abortion of fetus of the patient  if the ultrasound report of the patient is not available  then the name of the medical service provider is searched at step 250. If the name of the medical service provider is available  then it is transmitted to the server 110 from the computing device 130. The server then adds the name of the medical service provider to the suspicion list stored in the memory unit 150 at step 240.

In another alternate embodiment  upon abortion of fetus of the patient  if both the ultrasound report of the patient as well as name of the medical service provider associated with the patient is not available  then the memory unit 150 of server 110 is searched for the name of the medical service provider associated by the patient at step 260. If the name of the medical service provider associated with the patient is already available in the memory unit 150  then the name of the service provider is added to the suspicion list of the memory unit 150 at step 240. Further  the name of the patient is added to the barred list stored in the memory unit 150 at step 270.

The suspicion list is reviewed by the server 110 at regular intervals. In case  there are too many suspicious cases against a medical service provider  i.e. the name of the medical service provider is listed in the suspicion list a large number of times  then the server 110 transmits the details of such medical service provider through the network 120 using the communication module 160 to one or more organizations 170 at step 280. The organizations 170 including  but not limited to law and order maintaining authority  NGOs  insurance companies can then investigate against such medical service providers and take appropriate actions.

Further  the barred list is transmitted by the server 110 through the network using the communication module 160 to one or more organization 170 at step 280. The suspicion list and the barred list can be transmitted to the organizations 170 by the server 110 by at least of e-mail and Short Messaging Service (SMS). A person skilled in the art would understand that any other mode of electronic/non-electronic mode communication could be used to transmit the list. The organization 170 shall then take necessary measure to exclude the patient from using primary healthcare services in future.

A person skilled in the art would understand that any other report other than ultrasound report may be used in the present disclosure. If the medical service selected is pregnancy related medical service  then ultrasound report may be used for the above described method. In the alternative  if non-pregnancy related medical service is selected  then the same method can be applied for other kinds of medical reports.

Fig. 3 is an exemplary flowchart illustrating a method of preventing medical malpractices in accordance with second embodiment of the present disclosure.

In the illustrated embodiment  the patient is a pregnant woman. During the course of pregnancy  the health status of each of the patient is analyzed. Based on the analyzed health status  the expected type of delivery input using the computing device 130 to the server 110. In an embodiment  the expected type of delivery is determined by assessing a medical condition of the patient before childbirth and providing the medical report to the decision support module. The server stores the expected type of delivery corresponding to the patient in the memory unit 150 at step 310. The status of expected type of delivery can be ‘normal’ or ‘caesarean’. As an example  if there is no complication and health of the patient is normal  then the expected type of delivery is input as ‘normal’. Otherwise  if there is some problem in the fetus or there is some medical condition of the patient which shall not allow normal delivery  the expected type of delivery is input as ‘cesarean’.

Upon delivery of baby by the patient  the delivery information is received by the server 110 from the computing device 130 at step 320. The received delivery information is then compared with the expected type of delivery stored in the memory unit 150 at step 330. In case the delivery information does not match with the expected type of delivery  the delivery report of the patient is retrieved. In an embodiment  the delivery report comprises pre-pregnancy report and post pregnancy reports. The delivery report can be in free text or any other digital format. Further  the delivery report may be retrieved from the patient or the medical service provider. The retrieved delivery report is scanned by the computing device 130 and transmitted through the network 120 to the server 110. The delivery report is then provided to the processor 140 configured in the server 110 for verification at step 340. The processor 140 analyzes the delivery report to verify the reason for type of delivery. The verification of the reason for the type of delivery comprises determining the expected type of delivery to be matching with the type of delivery predicted by a decision support module implemented on at least one of a server 110 and a computing device 130. In particular  the processor 140 analyzes medical condition of the fetus of the patient and checks for any abnormality in the fetus as well as the patient.

The processing of the delivery report comprises converting the scanned delivery report is converted into a format understandable by computer for e.g.: an editable format. In an embodiment  the delivery report can be converted into by performing an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) processing. In another embodiment  other character recognition methods like Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR) and natural handwriting recognition can be used based on the type of report. The report converted to computer readable format is then provided natural language processing (NLP) module. The NLP module extracts meaningful medical terms from the delivery report for further processing. The processor 140 further comprises an analysis module to analyze the delivery report to determine medical meaning of the information. In an embodiment  the analysis module can be a decision support system as described in Fig. 2. The decision support system can be configured on at least one of the computing device 130 and the processor 140.

In case the processor 140  upon analyzing the report  determines that there was no abnormality in the condition of the patient  and still the cesarean operation was performed for delivery of the baby  result of the verification is marked as negative at step 350. When the verification is negative  the medical service provider is added to the suspicion list stored in the memory unit 150 at step 360.

The suspicion list is reviewed by the server 110 at regular intervals. In case  there are too many suspicious cases against a medical service provider  i.e. the name of the medical service provider is listed in the suspicion list a large number of times  then the server 110 transmits the details of such medical service provider through the network 120 using the communication module 160 to one or more organizations 170 at step 370. The suspicion list can be transmitted to the organizations 170 by the server 110 by at least of e-mail and Short Messaging Service (SMS). A person skilled in the art would understand that any other mode of electronic/non-electronic mode communication could be used to transmit the list. The organizations 170 include but not limited to law and order maintaining authority  NGOs  insurance companies can then investigate against such medical service providers and take appropriate actions. In an exemplary embodiment  the insurance companies receive the list of medical service providers who are involved in such medical malpractices. The insurance companies shall then accordingly exclude the medical service providers from the list of medical service providers covered under them.

This written description uses examples to disclose the invention  including the best mode  and also to enable any person skilled in the art to practice the invention  including making and using any devices or systems and performing any incorporated methods. The patentable scope of the invention is defined by the claims  and may include other examples that occur to those skilled in the art. Such other examples are intended to be within the scope of the claims if they have structural elements that do not differ from the literal language of the claims  or if they include equivalent structural elements with insubstantial differences from the literal languages of the claims.
Referral Numerals:

Reference number Description
110 Server
120 Network
130 Computing devices
140 Processor
150 Memory unit
160 Communication module
170 Organizations

We claim:

1. A method to prevent medical malpractices  said method comprising steps of:
receiving information by a server from one or more computing devices  wherein the information comprises at least one of medical report associated to a predetermined medical service provided to a patient and details of the medical service provider providing the medical service;
performing by a processor associated with the server  based on received information  at least one of:
determining presence of the medical report and verifying the medical service provided by the medical service provider to the patient  thereby marking the medical service provider in a suspicion list  when result of the verification is negative;
determining absence of the medical report and marking the medical service provider in the suspicion list;
determining absence of the medical report and the name of the medical service provider and marking the patient in a barred list; and
transmitting at least one of the suspicion list and the barred list to one or more organizations at predetermined regular intervals  wherein the suspicion list and the barred list are stored in a memory unit of the server.

2. The method as claimed in claim 1  wherein verifying the medical service comprises determining the medical service provided to the patient to be matching with the medical service predicted by a decision support module.

3. The method as claimed in claim 2 further comprises extracting one or more medical parameters from the information by the decision support module for predicting the medical service to be performed on the patient.

4. The method as claimed in claim 1  wherein upon determining absence of the medical report and the name of the medical service provider in the received information  extracting name of the medical service provider used by the patient from the memory unit of the server.

5. The method as claimed in claim 4  wherein the information of medical service provider used by the patient is received from the one or more computing devices and stored in the memory unit of the server.

6. The method as claimed in claim 1  wherein the information received by the server is converted into machine readable format  if the information received is in non-machine readable format.

7. The method as claimed in claim 1  wherein the medical service is selected from at least one of pregnancy related medical service and non-pregnancy related medical service.

8. A system to prevent medical malpractices comprising:
a server configured to receive information from one or more computing devices  wherein the information comprises at least one of medical report associated to a predetermined medical service provided to a patient and details of the medical service provider providing the medical service;
said server comprising:
a processor  in response to the information received by the server  configured to perform at least one of:
determine presence of the medical report and verify the medical service provided by the medical service provider to the patient  thereby mark the medical service provider in a suspicion list  when result of the verification is negative;
determine absence of the medical report and mark the medical service provider in the suspicion list;
determine absence of the medical report and the name of the medical service provider  and mark the patient in a barred list;
a communication module communicatively connected to the processor for transmitting at least one of the suspicion list and the barred list to one or more organizations at predetermined regular intervals  and
a memory unit communicatively coupled to the processor to store the suspicion list and the barred list.

9. The system as claimed in claim 8  wherein the processor determines absence of the medical report and the name of the medical service provider in the received information and thereby extracts name of the medical service provider used by the patient from the memory unit of the server.

10. The system as claimed in claim 8  wherein the medical service is verified by matching the medical service provided to the patient with the medical service predicted by a decision support module configured in at least one of the one or more computing devices and the server.

11. The system as claimed in claim 8  wherein the one or more computing devices are selected from at least one of mobile phone  Personal Digital Assistant (PDA)  smart phones  tablet computer  laptop  and palmtop.

12. The system as claimed in claim 8  wherein the one or more computing devices transmit the information by scanning and uploading the information to the server.

13. A processor in response to information received by a server configured to perform at least one of:
determining presence of a medical report in the received information and verifying the medical service provided by the medical service provider to the patient  thereby marking the medical service provider in a suspicion list  when result of the verification is negative;
determining absence of the medical report in the received information and marking the medical service provider in the suspicion list;
determining absence of the medical report and the name of the medical service provider in the received information  thereby marking the patient in a barred list; and
providing the suspicion list and the barred list for transmission to one or more organizations at predetermined regular intervals 
wherein the information comprises at least one of medical report associated to a predetermined medical service provided to a patient and details of the medical service provider performed the medical service.

14. A method to prevent medical malpractices comprising:
receiving delivery information by a server upon childbirth by a patient  wherein the delivery information comprises at least one of type of delivery  a delivery report and name of the medical service provider performing the delivery;
comparing the received delivery information with an expected type of delivery by a processor associated with the server;
performing by the processor  upon determining the comparison to be negative  at least one of:
processing the delivery report to verify reason for the type of delivery;
marking the medical service provider in a suspicion list when result of the verification is negative; and
transmitting the suspicion list to one or more organizations at predetermined regular intervals  wherein the expected type of delivery and the suspicion list are stored in a memory unit associated with the server.

15. The method as claimed in claim 14  wherein the expected type of delivery is determined by assessing a medical condition of the patient before childbirth using the medical report by a decision support module.

16. The method as claimed in claim 15 further comprises extracting one or more medical parameters from the delivery information by the decision support module for determining the expected type of delivery.

17. The method as claimed in claim 14  wherein the verifying the reason for the type of delivery comprises determining the type of delivery to be matching with the type of delivery predicted by a decision support module.

18. The method as claimed in claim 14  wherein the delivery information received by the server is converted into machine readable format  if the delivery information received is in non-machine readable format.

19. A system to prevent medical malpractices comprising:
a server configured to receive delivery information from one or more computing devices upon child birth by a patient  wherein the delivery information comprises at least one of type of delivery  a delivery report and name of the medical service provider performing the delivery 
said server comprising:
a processor  in response to the delivery information received by the server  configured to perform at least one of:
comparing the received delivery information with an expected type of delivery;
performing  upon determining the comparison to be negative  at least one of:
processing the delivery report to verify reason for the type of delivery; and
marking the medical service provider in a suspicion list when result of the verification is negative;
a communication module communicatively connected to the processor for transmitting the suspicion list to one or more organizations at predetermined regular intervals  and
a memory unit communicatively coupled to the processor to store the expected type of delivery and the suspicion list.

20. The system as claimed in claim 19  wherein the one or more computing devices are selected from at least one of mobile phone  Personal Digital Assistant (PDA)  smart phones  tablet computer  laptop  and palmtop.

21. The system as claimed in claim 19  wherein the one or more computing devices transmit the information by scanning and uploading the information to the server.

22. A processor in response to delivery information received by a server configured to perform at least one of:
comparing the received delivery information with an expected type of delivery;
performing  upon determining the comparison to be negative  at least one of:
processing the delivery report to verify reason for the type of delivery;
marking the medical service provider in a suspicion list when result of the verification is negative; and
providing the suspicion list for transmission to one or more organizations at predetermined regular intervals 
wherein the delivery information comprises at least one of type of delivery  a delivery report and name of the medical service provider performing the delivery.