# US 10,765,379 B2 · Systems and methods for medical alert management

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- Number: US 10,765,379 B2
- Document ID: US10765379B2
- Status: Granted
- Kind: B2
- Application number: 15/967,772
- Filed: 2018-05-01
- Published: 2018-11-01
- Granted: 2020-09-08
- Earliest claimed: 2017-05-01
- Assignees: Cardiac Pacemakers, Inc.
- Applicants: Cardiac Pacemakers, Inc.
- Inventors: David L. Perschbacher; Sunipa Saha; JoAnna Trapp Simpson; Keith Mattson
- Web page: https://patentgrep.com/patent/US10765379B2

## CPC

- A61B 5/746: {Alarms related to a physiological condition, e.g. details of setting alarm thresholds or avoiding false alarms}
- A61B 5/002: {Monitoring the patient using a local or closed circuit, e.g. in a room or building (A61B5/0017 takes precedence)}
- A61B 5/349: Detecting specific parameters of the electrocardiograph cycle
- A61B 5/686: {Permanently implanted devices, e.g. pacemakers, other stimulators, biochips (A61B5/6861 takes precedence)}
- A61B 5/7275: {Determining trends in physiological measurement data; Predicting development of a medical condition based on physiological measurements, e.g. determining a risk factor}
- A61B 5/7282: {Event detection, e.g. detecting unique waveforms indicative of a medical condition (cough events A61B5/0823; seizures A61B5/4094; sleep apnoea A61B5/4818)}
- A61N 1/36135: {using physiological parameters}
- A61N 1/37258: {Alerting the patient}
- G16H 40/20: for the management or administration of healthcare resources or facilities, e.g. managing hospital staff or surgery rooms
- G16H 40/67: for remote operation
- G16H 50/30: for calculating health indices; for individual health risk assessment
- A61B 5/6869: {Heart}
- A61B: DIAGNOSIS; SURGERY; IDENTIFICATION (usefulness limited to only animals A61D)
- A61N: ELECTROTHERAPY; MAGNETOTHERAPY; RADIATION THERAPY; ULTRASOUND THERAPY (measurement of bioelectric currents A61B; surgical instruments, devices or methods for transferring non-mechanical forms of energy to or from the body A61B18/00; anaesthetic apparatus in general A61M; incandescent lamps H01K; infrared radiators for heating H05B)
- G16H: HEALTHCARE INFORMATICS, i.e. INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY [ICT] SPECIALLY ADAPTED FOR THE HANDLING OR PROCESSING OF MEDICAL OR HEALTHCARE DATA

## Abstract

Systems and methods for managing machine-generated medical alerts associated with physiological events detected from one or more patients are described herein. An alert management system may receive medical events detected from a patient and physiological data associated with patient historical medical alerts. The system comprises an alert prioritizer circuit to generate an event priority indicator for the detected medical event, using a comparison between the detected medical event and the physiological data associated with patient historical medical alerts. The system can identify prolific alert patients using the information about the historical medical alerts. The alert prioritizer circuit can adjust a priority of the detected medical event, and an output circuit can present a priority to a user or a process using the event priority indicator and the identification of prolific alert patient.

## Claims

### Claim 1

A system for managing machine-generated medical alerts, the system comprising:
a receiver circuit configured to receive a medical event detected from a patient and information of historical medical alerts associated with the patient;
an alert prioritizer circuit configured to generate an event priority indicator for the detected medical event using the detected medical event and the information of historical medical alerts;
a patient identifier circuit configured to identify a prolific alert patient, the prolific alert patient having a quantity of historical medical alerts exceeding a threshold quantity value during a specified time period; and
an output circuit configured to adjust an alert timing or an alert order based on the generated event priority indicator, and to schedule a presentation of the detected medical event using the identification of the prolific alert patient.

### Claim 2 (depends on 1)

The system of claim 1, wherein the alert prioritizer circuit is configured to adjust a priority of the detected medical event by lowering the priority of the detected medical event when the detected medical event is similar to events in the information of historical medical alerts.

### Claim 3 (depends on 1)

The system of claim 1, wherein the alert prioritizer circuit is configured to adjust a priority of the detected medical event by increasing the priority of the detected medical event when the detected medical event is dissimilar to events in the information of historical medical alerts.

### Claim 4 (depends on 1)

The system of claim 1, wherein the information of the historical medical alerts includes existing alerts stored in a memory.

### Claim 5 (depends on 1)

The system of claim 1, further comprising:
a sensor circuit configured to sense a physiological signal from the patient; and
a detector circuit configured to detect the detected medical event using the sensed physiological signal;
wherein the alert prioritizer circuit is configured to generate the event priority indicator using a comparison between the detected medical event and the information of historical medical alerts.

### Claim 6 (depends on 5)

The system of claim 5, wherein the information of historical medical alerts includes a plurality of historical physiological signal characteristics corresponding to the historical medical alerts, and the alert prioritizer circuit is configured to:
extract a signal characteristic from the sensed physiological signal in response to the detection of the medical event;
compute a similarity metric between (1) the extracted signal characteristic corresponding to the detected medical event and (2) the plurality of the historical physiological signal characteristics corresponding to the historical medical alerts; and
generate the event priority indicator inversely related to the similarity metric.

### Claim 7 (depends on 6)

The system of claim 6, wherein the alert prioritizer circuit is configured to:
generate a representative historical signal characteristic from the plurality of historical physiological signal characteristics corresponding to the historical medical alerts; and
compute a similarity metric between (1) the extracted signal characteristic corresponding to the detected medical event and (2) the representative historical signal characteristic.

### Claim 8 (depends on 1)

The system of claim 1, wherein:
the alert prioritizer circuit is configured to generate, for a plurality of detected medical events, respective event priority indicators; and
the alert prioritizer circuit is configured to adjust priorities of the plurality of detected medical events using the respective event priority indicators, and to schedule a human-perceptible presentation of the plurality of medical events arranged in a descending order of the adjusted priorities.

### Claim 9 (depends on 1)

The system of claim 1, wherein the medical event includes a cardiac event.

### Claim 10 (depends on 1)

The system of claim 1, wherein the output circuit is configured to generate an alert of the detected medical event only if the event priority indicator satisfies a condition.

### Claim 11 (depends on 1)

The system of claim 1, wherein the output circuit is configured to generate an alert of the medical event detected from the identified prolific alert patient based on the quantity of historical medical alerts of the identified prolific alert patient during the specified time period.

### Claim 12

A method for managing machine-generated medical alerts via a medical system, the method comprising:
receiving a medical event detected from a patient and information of historical medical alerts associated with the patient using a receiver circuit;
generating, using an alert prioritizer circuit, an event priority indicator for the detected medical event using the detected medical event and the information of historical medical alerts;
identifying a prolific alert patient having a quantity of historical medical alerts exceeding a threshold quantity value during a specified time period; and
using an output circuit, adjusting an alert timing or an alert order based on the event priority indicator, and scheduling a presentation of the detected medical event using the identification of the prolific alert patient.

### Claim 13 (depends on 12)

The method of claim 12, further comprising adjusting a priority of the detected medical event, wherein the adjusting the priority of the detected medical event includes one or more of:
lowering the priority of the detected medical event when the detected medical event is similar to events in the information of historical medical alerts; or
increasing the priority of the detected medical event when the detected medical event is dissimilar to events in the information of historical medical alerts.

### Claim 14 (depends on 12)

The method of claim 12, wherein the information of historical medical alerts includes a plurality of historical physiological signal characteristics corresponding to the historical medical alerts, the method further comprising:
receiving a physiological signal from the patient during the detected medical event;
extracting a signal characteristic from the received physiological signal;
computing a similarity metric between (1) the extracted signal characteristic corresponding to the detected medical event and (2) the plurality of the historical physiological signal characteristics corresponding to the historical medical alerts; and
generating the event priority indicator inversely related to the similarity metric.

### Claim 15 (depends on 14)

The method of claim 14, further comprising generating a representative historical signal characteristic from the plurality of historical physiological signal characteristics corresponding to the historical medical alerts;
wherein computing the similarity metric includes computing a distance between (1) the extracted signal characteristic corresponding to the detected medical event and (2) the representative historical signal characteristic.

### Claim 16 (depends on 14)

The method of claim 14, wherein the historical medical alerts includes one or more alert clusters each comprising one or more historical physiological signal characteristics, and wherein:
computing one or more similarity metrics respectively for the one or more alert clusters, the one or more similarity metrics each being computed between (1) the extracted signal characteristic corresponding to the detected medical event and (2) the one or more historical physiological signal characteristics of the corresponding alert cluster; and
generating the event priority indicator using the one or more similarity metrics and a cluster priority.

### Claim 17

A system for managing machine-generated medical alerts, the system comprising:
a sensor circuit configured to sense a physiological signal from a patient; and
a detector circuit configured to detect a medical event using the sensed physiological signal;
a receiver circuit configured to receive information of historical medical alerts associated with the patient, the information of historical medical alerts including one or more alert clusters each comprising one or more historical physiological signal characteristics;
an alert prioritizer circuit configured to:
extract a signal characteristic from the sensed physiological signal in response to the detection of the medical event;
compute one or more similarity metrics respectively for the one or more alert clusters, the one or more similarity metrics each being computed between (1) the extracted signal characteristic corresponding to the detected medical event and (2) the one or more historical physiological signal characteristics of the corresponding alert cluster; and
generate an event priority indicator using the one or more similarity metrics and a cluster priority, the event priority indicator inversely related to at least one of the one or more similarity metrics; and
an output circuit configured to adjust an alert timing or an alert order based on the generated event priority indicator.

### Claim 18 (depends on 17)

The system of claim 17, wherein the one or more alert clusters include at least one of:
a true positive alert cluster comprising historical physiological signal characteristics corresponding to true positive detections of historical medical events;
or a false positive alert cluster comprising historical physiological signal characteristics corresponding to false positive detections of historical medical events.

### Claim 19 (depends on 17)

The system of claim 17, wherein the one or more alert clusters include one or more medical event types.

### Claim 20 (depends on 17)

The system of claim 17, wherein the one or more alert clusters include one or more value ranges of a physiological parameter.