Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
DETAILED ACTION
This action is in response to the applicant’s filing on October 20, 2025. Claims 11-24 are pending.
Response to Amendment and Arguments
In respond to applicant's arguments based on the filed amendment with respect to 35 U.S.C. 102 rejections of said previous office action have been fully considered; however, upon further consideration, a new ground(s) of rejection is made.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claim(s) 11-24 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Polley et al. US2019/0331701 (“Polley”) in view of Lai et al. US2020/0198142 (“Lai”).
Regarding claim(s) 11, 20. Polley discloses a method for performing health tests and collecting health-related personal data using resources connected via a computer network, the resources including:
a health database system communicating with the computer network and including a database management system and a personal database, and a plurality of mobile health test systems (para. 11, , a system for monitoring an environment, such as a healthcare environment, is provided in a single, centralized, and streamlined manner. Whether samples or monitoring data come from personnel, a robot or cobot, the system may receive the results of the analysis (along with other monitoring-related data) and output information (e.g., alerts, reports, trends, forecasts) to environmental services, facilities management, cleaning companies, infection prevention personnel, electronic health record (EHR)/electronic medical record (EMR) systems and/or governmental agencies.),
each mobile health test system having at least one automatically controllable robot configured to perform at least one health-related test procedure, and a test system controller communicating with the computer network via a first communication means (para. 11, The system may dynamically schedule the monitoring based on various needs and ongoing changes in the environment, and also provide routing and work instructions to personnel and/or robots and/or cobots, and further manage, maintain, and organize all information associated with the environmental, equipment and human monitoring so that information can be accessed, analyzed, and, if necessary, responded to, in real-time and/or in a timely manner. In one embodiment, all of these tasks are performed by one or more self-driving, self-navigating robots (and/or cobots) may be used to collect samples and/or perform analysis on the collected samples.), the method comprising:
collecting personal data via the database management system, wherein the collected personal data includes personal location information of individuals stored in the personal database of the health database system (FIG. 5 illustrates an example robot performing sample collection and/or sample analysis in accordance with one or more aspects of the present disclosure.);
deploying at least one mobile health test system to a location based on personal location information accumulated for several persons (para. 26, computer-controlled, self-driving, and/or self-navigating devices (or any suitable autonomously guided vehicle, AGV) equipped with sensors, tools, collection and testing equipment, etc. may move about in the environment and collect various samples. These devices may be configured as robots (fully autonomous), cobots (semi-autonomous) or stationary sensors. A “co-bot” may be a device that is configured to assist a user (and is not necessarily fully autonomous) and may, for example, be physically moved by the user from one location to another location (as opposed to being self-driving).);
configuring the at least one deployed mobile health test system to perform the at least one health-related test procedure on the person to whom the individualized on-site appointment is assigned during the scheduled time period of the individualized on-site appointment (para. 80, the centralized system may automatically and dynamically generate additional routing algorithms, which may be based on changes in the environment or need, record the locations of the samplings, schedule the samplings (e.g., routine, scheduled, random), provide navigation information to robots or cobots, dynamically prioritize the samplings based things like real-time data, or past or forecasted contaminations, and may also code the samples in a manner suitable for processing.);
performing a laboratory diagnostic method to collect individualized test results from the individual health-related test procedures; and storing the individualized test results in the form of health-related personal data in the personal database of the health database using the database management system (para. 25-28, para. 33, (ii) collect the samples and/or test and/or monitoring results, (iii) process and/or perform analysis the collected samples or assessment data, and (iv) automatically output or generate information based on the results of the monitoring (e.g., reports, alerts, trends, forecasts, dashboards, or other types of information), such as providing the information to EHR, EMR or other medical record systems, so that appropriate action can be taken in the event of contamination.).
Polley does not explicitly disclose automatically sending information about an individualized on-site appointment at the deployed location of the at least one mobile health test system to a plurality of persons.
Lai teaches another telemedicine robot that automatically sending information about an individualized on-site appointment at the deployed location of the at least one mobile health test system to a plurality of persons ([0037, 0061, 0066, 0083, 0088] A telepresence network and/or device may detect that a patient's data is being reviewed by the physician and the telepresence device may be automatically dispatched to the patient's room. Accordingly, when the physician remotely connects to the telepresence device, the telepresence device may already be at the patient's bedside or en route to the patient's bedside. In one embodiment, the telepresence device may perform patient rounds, checking on and/or recording information for a plurality of patients at scheduled intervals. The healthcare practitioner may review patient data recorded during the rounds.).
Thus, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skills in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the system and method of Polley by incorporating the applied teaching of Lai to improve workflow and scheduling services for multiple patient. Furthermore, the claimed invention is merely a combination of old, well known elements healthcare scheduling for services and as such and one of ordinary skill before the effective filing date of the claimed invention would have recognized that the results of the combination would have been predictable.
Regarding claim(s) 12. Polley discloses wherein at least one of: the resources connected via the computer network include a plurality of terminal devices that are connected to the computer network via second communication means; automatically sending information about an individualized on-site appointment to at least one person comprises sending the information to the person's individual terminal device; or the personal location information of individuals includes information that has been entered into the personal database via terminal devices connected to the computer network (para. 62, such as robot 200 or robot 300, may be configured with various sampling and/or monitoring equipment in order to sample and monitor numerous things (e.g., air, surfaces, water, humans, hospital equipment) within a particular environment, and may communicate with computer 100 via network 150 during the course of sampling and/or monitoring. For example, a surface may be swabbed by the robot using one or more robotic arms, a sampling arm may sample the air in the environment, an air sample collector or sensor configured in the robot may also sample the air, a dedicated sampling arm can sample a surface, image sensors in the robot may visually monitor the surfaces (as opposed to sampling), and the robot may monitor and/or sample humans within the environment.).
Regarding claim(s) 13. Polley discloses further comprising at least one of: automatically sending by the database management system information related to individualized test results to an individual person via one of the second communication means; or automatically sending by the database management system anonymized data from multiple test results of multiple persons to a statistics database connected to the database management system via third communication means (FIG. 4, data may be acquired and managed in various ways with respect to the system-side. FIG. 4 also shows how data may be acquired and managed in various ways the robot/cobot/sensor-side, where used according to some aspects of the present invention. Data may be manually entered (e.g., individual, bulk), or transmitted or received via wireless data transfer (e.g., HL7 data packages), data may be acquired, transmitted, managed, etc. via various interfaces (e.g., existing monitoring equipment, new monitoring equipment, bench-top equipment), and data, such as flat data files (e.g., excel), may be stored locally in computing devices connected to the centralized system and/or in large databases connected to the centralized system.).
Regarding claim(s) 14. Polley discloses further comprising: controlling the at least one automatically controlled robot using the test system controller such that the robot automatically performs the at least one health-related test procedure (para. 78, the cobot 660, for instance, may receive and store samples (e.g., swabs) from hospital personnel and transported to an analytics site, such a lab that may be several rooms down from the examination area 612. The robot 650 may be configured similarly to robots 620, 630, and 640 and automatically monitor the examination area 612. Any of these robots or cobots can also be used to check other robots or cobots for the presence of contaminants. Optionally, the robots or cobots could also have equipment to de-contaminate each other. In addition, sensors 670 can be mounted to test contaminants in water, the air, or the like and feed data directly into the robot 650 or the system).
Regarding claim(s) 15. Polley discloses wherein: the at least one health-related test procedure comprises a swab from the nose or throat or oral cavity of a person using a sterile sample carrier; and the method further comprises automatically guiding the sterile sample carrier by the robot of the mobile health test system, controlled by the test system controller in at least one of a force-controlled or torque-controlled operation of the robot (para. 53, Robot 200 may include one or more computing devices, various sensors, and at least one communication interface, which allows the robot 200 to communicate with the centralized system via a network and corresponding antennas that may be installed in the hospital. The robot 200 may receive routing instructions via the communication interface and the one or more computing devices may control the autonomous platform 202 in the hospital according to the received routing instructions. Similarly, robot 200 may also receive work assignments, which may include instructions regarding which surfaces to sample, which locations in the hospital, the number of samples to collect, how to process those samples, how to perform analysis on the samples, etc.).
Regarding claim(s) 16. Polley discloses further comprising: temporarily storing a plurality of individually assigned individually assigned samples obtained from the tested persons during the performed health-related test methods in a sample magazine of the mobile health test system (para. 25, (ii) collect the samples and/or test and/or monitoring results, (iii) process and/or perform analysis the collected samples or assessment data, and (iv) automatically output or generate information based on the results of the monitoring (e.g., reports, alerts, trends, forecasts, dashboards, or other types of information), such as providing the information to EHR, EMR or other medical record systems, so that appropriate action can be taken in the event of contamination.).
Regarding claim(s) 17. Polley discloses further comprising at least one of: collecting a batch of the plurality of samples from the mobile health test system for transport to a stationary laboratory; or performing a respective laboratory diagnostic procedure on the plurality of samples (para. 87, a laboratory information management system (LIMS) receives the outputted results and analyzes the results in step 729. Further, the LIMS can store batch/lot ID information in step 725, which is output in step 721 to facilitate processing of sample in step 707.).
Regarding claim(s) 18. Polley discloses wherein the test system controller is configured to automatically perform at least one of a health test or a laboratory diagnostic procedure in the mobile health test system using the robot (para. 35, collection of samples and monitoring assessments, and analysis of samples from the environment, and dynamically and automatically generates an output, such as a real-time alert to appropriate environment personnel if a contamination is detected. The system may also be configured to autonomously perform analysis on those collected samples itself.).
Regarding claim(s) 19. Polley discloses wherein the test system controller is configured to automatically perform a personal authorization of a person at the mobile health test system based on data from the personal database of the health database system before the individual health-related test method is performed on the person at the mobile health test system (para. 33, data and information associated with the collected samples and the performed analysis may be sent to and/or dynamically processed by the system for further analysis or output. For example, appropriate personnel in the environment may be alerted (e.g., text, e-mail, paging messages) of a contamination in a particular room or section of the environment. The alert may be sent to the personnel's mobile computing device (e.g., smartphone, laptop, tablet computer). In a further example, a dashboard interface may be generated, and a user, such as hospital personnel, may view reports).
Regarding claim(s) 21. Polley discloses a disinfection device configured to disinfect the at least one robot of the mobile health test system (para. 28, checklists to monitor other processes or indicators such as (i) Intravenous (IV) catheter insertion, (ii) wound dressing change, (iii) multidrug resistant organism (MDRO) transmission-based precautions, (v) process of disinfecting and sterilizing equipment/instruments, and (vi) a record of cleaning within the ward environment. Further, collected temperature, humidity, air flow monitoring and/or other physical chemical parameter data can be compared against predetermined limits.).
Regarding claim(s) 22. Polley discloses at least one communication interface configured to enable at least one of audio or video communication between a person located in the counter area of the mobile health test system and a service person located remotely from the mobile health test system (para. 82, any and all visual data captured by image or audio sensors (e.g., video, audio), information related to specific contaminations (e.g., whether they have been eradicated), the location of certain contaminated patients (e.g., if the patient has been moved from one patient room to a different room), etc).
Regarding claim(s) 23. Polley in view of Lai further teaches automatically send information about an individualized on-site appointment at a deployed location of the mobile health test system to a plurality of persons; andperform the at least one health-related test procedure on at least one of the plurality of persons to whom the individualized on-site appointment is assigned during a scheduled time period of the individualized on-site appointment (Lai: ([0037, 0061, 0066, 0083, 0088] A telepresence network and/or device may detect that a patient's data is being reviewed by the physician and the telepresence device may be automatically dispatched to the patient's room. Accordingly, when the physician remotely connects to the telepresence device, the telepresence device may already be at the patient's bedside or en route to the patient's bedside. In one embodiment, the telepresence device may perform patient rounds, checking on and/or recording information for a plurality of patients at scheduled intervals. The healthcare practitioner may review patient data recorded during the rounds.).
Regarding claim(s) 24. (Polley in view of Lai further teaches wherein the deployed location of the mobile health test system is based on personal location information accumulated for several persons ([0037, 0061, 0066, 0083, 0088] A telepresence network and/or device may detect that a patient's data is being reviewed by the physician and the telepresence device may be automatically dispatched to the patient's room. Accordingly, when the physician remotely connects to the telepresence device, the telepresence device may already be at the patient's bedside or en route to the patient's bedside. In one embodiment, the telepresence device may perform patient rounds, checking on and/or recording information for a plurality of patients at scheduled intervals. The healthcare practitioner may review patient data recorded during the rounds.)
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any extension fee pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the date of this final action.
Inquiry
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to TRUC M DO whose telephone number is (571)270-5962. The examiner can normally be reached on 9AM-6PM.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Ramón Mercado, Ph.D. can be reached on (571) 270-5744. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/TRUC M DO/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3658