Virtual medical assistant methods and apparatus

A host device for improving safety of performing one or more medical tasks by providing access to a medical domain-specific virtual clinical assistant, the host device being capable of connecting to at least one network, the host device comprising:

• at least one processor configured to:
• provide, to a medical professional, at least one graphical user interface to a virtual clinical assistant;
• receive free-form instruction from the medical professional using a dialog component via at least one microphone and/or the at least one graphical user interface;
• provide the free-form instruction for speech processing, including automatic speech recognition, at least by transmitting the free-form instruction over the at least one network to an automatic speech recognition component to recognize at least a portion of the free form instruction to provide a recognized free-form instruction;
• provide the recognized free-form instruction to a natural language understanding component to automatically identify, from the recognized free-form instruction, at least one medical task to be performed;
• receive medical information relating to the free-form instruction from a medical information resource via the at least one network;
• automatically identify information missing from the free-form instruction, the missing information needed to perform the at least one medical task;
• automatically infer at least some of the information missing from the free-form instruction needed to perform the at least one medical task to improve the safety of performing the at least one medical task;
• generate, based on the at least some information, an electronic message for triggering performance of the at least one medical task identified from the free-form instruction, wherein generating the electronic message comprises generating the electronic message in a standard format for exchange of messages between systems for performing medical tasks;
• and
• output the electronic message for transmission, via the at least one network, in the standard format to a system for performing the at least one medical task.

A host device for improving safety of performing one or more medical tasks by providing access to a medical domain-specific virtual clinical assistant, the host device being capable of connecting to at least one network, the host device comprising:

• at least one processor configured to:
• provide, to a medical professional, at least one graphical user interface to a virtual clinical assistant;
• receive free-form instruction from the medical professional using a dialog component via at least one microphone and/or the at least one graphical user interface;
• provide the free-form instruction for speech processing, including automatic speech recognition, at least by transmitting the free-form instruction over the at least one network to an automatic speech recognition component to recognize at least a portion of the free form instruction to provide a recognized free-form instruction;
• provide the recognized free-form instruction to a natural language understanding component to automatically identify, from the recognized free-form instruction, at least one medical task to be performed;
• receive medical information relating to the free-form instruction from a medical information resource via the at least one network;
• automatically identify at least one conflict in the free-form instruction, the at least one conflict preventing performing the at least one medical task;
• automatically infer at least some information needed to resolve the at least one conflict to improve the safety of performing the at least one medical task;
• generate, based on the at least some information, an electronic message for triggering performance of the at least one medical task identified from the free-form instruction, wherein generating the electronic message comprises generating the electronic message in a standard format for exchange of messages between systems for performing medical tasks;
• and
• output the electronic message for transmission, via the at least one network, in the standard format to a system for performing the at least one medical task.