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 .
Status of Claims
This action is in reply to the claims filed on 22 April 2026.
Claims 1, 14, and 20 are amended.
Claims 1-20 are pending.
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 22 April 2026 has been entered.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-20 would be allowable if rewritten or amended to overcome the rejection(s) under 35 U.S.C. 101, set forth in this Office action.
Examiner notes Chaudhuri et al. (US 2023/0215563 A1) discloses a primary admission value by utilizing a first model and a readmission value by utilizing a second model as described in paragraph [0115]. While the first model of Chaudhuri does comprise of a count of first hospital admission events for the disease of interest occurring within a defined time period as described in paragraph [0117], it does not disclose the readmission value comprising a count of subsequent hospital admission events for the disease of interest occurring within the defined time period after a corresponding first hospital admission event. Paragraph [0115] of Chaudhuri recites:
readmission predictor 230 includes a first model trained on a first subset of patient data and a second model trained on a second subset of patient data. The first and second subsets of patient data may utilize different periods of time.
As noted in paragraph [0115], since the first subset of data is utilized by the first model and the second subset of data are utilized by the second model and the first and second subsets of patient data are utilized at different periods of time, the first and second models utilize data from two different time periods. This is different from what the claim requires, which is two sets of data occurring within the same time period. Therefore, Chaudhuri does not disclose the newly recited limitations.
Moreover, even assuming arguendo that the features of the claims exist individually, the combination of features as claimed would not have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art because any combination of the evidence obtained to reach the combination of features as claimed would require a substantial reconstruction of Applicant’s claimed invention relying on improper hindsight bias.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 USC § 101
Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more.
Representative claim 1 recites:
obtaining… real-time hospital admission data in a plurality of formats from one or more data sources, the real-time hospital admission data associated with a plurality of individuals;
standardizing…the real-time hospital admission data from the plurality of formats into a standard format to generate standardized real-time hospital admission data, the standard format for the standardized real-time hospital admission data including at least one patient identifier, at least one indicator of a disease of interest, and at least one admission date;
generating…a modified standardized real-time hospital admission dataset by removing extraneous data from the standardized real-time hospital admission data based on the at least one indicator of the disease of interest;
determining… a primary admission value based on the modified standardized real-time hospital admission dataset associated with the plurality of individuals and for the disease of interest, the primary admission value comprising a count of first hospital admission events for the disease of interest occurring within a defined time period;
determining… a readmission value based on the modified standardized real-time hospital admission dataset associated with the plurality of individuals, the readmission value comprising a count of subsequent hospital admission events for the disease of interest occurring within the defined time period after a corresponding first hospital admission event;
determining…a disease-specific readmission rate based on the primary admission value and the readmission value,
wherein the primary admission value and the readmission value are based on a common indicator of a disease of interest; and
causing to output…data associated with the disease-specific readmission rate based on the modified standardized real-time hospital admission dataset.
Therefore, the claim as a whole is directed to determining a disease-specific readmission rate. “Determining a disease-specific readmission rate” is considered to be a method of organizing human activity because it is a concept of managing personal behavior or relationships or interactions between people (including social activities, teaching, and following rules or instructions) where it can be a process performed by a medical professional in order to determine/predict if a patient may be readmitted to a hospital. It is also a mathematical concept because it the disease-specific readmission rate is a statistical value calculated to determine whether a patient will be readmitted.
This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application. In particular, claim 1 recites the following additional element(s): one or more processors; one or more storage devices; and a graphical user interface of a user device. These additional elements individually or in combination do not integrate the exception into a practical application because they merely apply the judicial exception to a computer and uses a computer as a tool to perform an abstract idea (see MPEP 2106.05(f)). Accordingly, these additional elements do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because they do not impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea. Claim 1 is directed to an abstract idea.
Claim 1 does not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. As discussed above with respect to integration of the abstract idea into a practical application, the additional elements individually and in combination merely applies the judicial exception to a computer and uses a computer as a tool to perform an abstract idea Accordingly, claim 1 is ineligible.
Dependent claim(s) 2-11 and 13 merely further limit the abstract idea and are thereby considered to be ineligible.
Dependent claim(s) 12 further recite the additional element(s) a trained second machine learning model. This additional element(s) does no more than apply the abstract idea to the technical field of machine learning, which does not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application, nor does it render the claim as being significantly more than the abstract idea. Accordingly, claim(s) 12 is ineligible.
Claim(s) 14-18 is parallel in nature to claim(s) 1-3, 5, and 11; and claim 20 is parallel in nature to claim 1. Accordingly claim(s) 14-18; and 20 are rejected as being directed towards ineligible subject matter based upon the same analysis above.
Dependent claim(s) 19 merely further limits the abstract idea and are thereby considered to be ineligible.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 15 August 2025, with respect to 35 USC § 101, have been fully considered but they are not persuasive. With regard to claims 1-20, the applicant argues that 1.) the claims do not recite a judicial exception; 2.) the claims integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because they provide the technical improvement to better determine readmission rates in a patient population; and 3.) the claims recite significantly more than any alleged exception under Step 2B.
In response to argument 1.) applicant argues the claims do not recite a judicial exception because the claims do not instruct healthcare providers how to behave, nor do they recite any rule governing patient interaction. The invention as claimed focuses on processing structured medical event data to generate a disease-specific metric. In response to the Applicant’s argument the examiner respectfully disagrees. It is a concept directed to managing personal behavior because these are steps that can be performed by a medical professional in order to determine/predict if a patient may be readmitted to a hospital. This is similar to concepts that the court have found to be abstract such as a mental process that a neurologist should follow when testing a patient for nervous system malfunctions, In re Meyer, 688 F.2d 789, 791-93, 215 USPQ 193, 194-96 (CCPA 1982). Furthermore, this metric as claimed can also be described as a mathematical concept, because it is a statistical number that is being calculated to determine the probability of the patient being readmitted to the hospital. While the claim does recite standardizing…the real-time hospital admission data from the plurality of formats into a standard format, the claim does not recite any computer functionality in what the standardization entails and does not recite the specific way in which the data is formatted. The limitation is recited as a high level and merely describes the standardization to include a patient identifier, which could be a name, at least one indicator of a disease of interest, which could be a symptom, and at least one admission date. The standardizing as claimed is no more than a minimum required data needed for a patient’s medical records. The claim does not recite any data structures and does not describe any type of data structure processing. Therefore, the examiner maintains the claims recite a judicial exception.
In response to the argument 2), the Examiner respectfully disagrees. In order for a claim to be integrated into a practical application Examiners must evaluate whether the claim recites additional elements that integrate the exception into a practical application of that exception. USPTO guidance uses the term ‘‘additional elements’’ to refer to claim features, limitations, and/or steps that are recited in the claim beyond the identified judicial exception. As noted in the rejection above, the limitations of:
obtaining… real-time hospital admission data in a plurality of formats from one or more data sources, the real-time hospital admission data associated with a plurality of individuals;
standardizing…the real-time hospital admission data from the plurality of formats into a standard format to generate standardized real-time hospital admission data, the standard format for the standardized real-time hospital admission data including at least one patient identifier, at least one indicator of a disease of interest, and at least one admission date;
generating…a modified standardized real-time hospital admission dataset by removing extraneous data from the standardized real-time hospital admission data based on the at least one indicator of the disease of interest;
determining… a primary admission value based on the modified standardized real-time hospital admission dataset associated with the plurality of individuals and for the disease of interest, the primary admission value comprising a count of first hospital admission events for the disease of interest occurring within a defined time period;
determining… a readmission value based on the modified standardized real-time hospital admission dataset associated with the plurality of individuals, the readmission value comprising a count of subsequent hospital admission events for the disease of interest occurring within the defined time period after a corresponding first hospital admission event;
determining…a disease-specific readmission rate based on the primary admission value and the readmission value,
wherein the primary admission value and the readmission value are based on a common indicator of a disease of interest; and
causing to output…data associated with the disease-specific readmission rate based on the modified standardized real-time hospital admission dataset.
are not considered to be “additional elements” because they are directed towards the judicial exception (i.e. an abstract idea). The limitations argued by the applicant are considered to be an abstract idea and fall under the methods of organizing human activity bucket because it is a concept directed to managing personal behavior. It is a concept directed to managing personal behavior because these are steps that can be performed by a medical professional in order to determine/predict if a patient may be readmitted to a hospital. This is similar to concepts that the courts have found to be abstract such as a mental process that a neurologist should follow when testing a patient for nervous system malfunctions, In re Meyer, 688 F.2d 789, 791-93, 215 USPQ 193, 194-96 (CCPA 1982). Finally, the sub-groupings of concepts that fall under the grouping Methods of organizing human behavior, encompass certain activity between a person and a computer (for example a method of anonymous loan shopping that a person conducts using a mobile phone) may fall within the "certain methods of organizing human activity" grouping. Therefore, a human using a graphical user interface to view the automated metric computation does not prohibit the concept from being a method of organizing human activity because activities between a person and a computer still fall under the grouping (see MPEP 2106.04(a)(2)II).
The claim also falls under the bucket of mathematical concepts because the readmission value is a statistical number that is being calculated to determine the probability of the patient being readmitted to the hospital.
The only limitations that go beyond the judicial exception are one or more processors; one or more storage devices; and a graphical user interface of a user device. These limitations do no more than merely uses a computer as a tool to perform an abstract idea (see MPEP 2106.05(f)), which is not considered to be a technical improvement. The invention as claimed is unlike the Dejardins decision where the claims provided a technical improvement to the technical field of machine learning, because the purported improvement to the applicant’s invention is an improvement to the abstract idea and not to any of the computer technology claimed. Therefore, the examiner maintains the claims are not integrated into a practical application.
In response to argument 3.) the applicant argues the examiner has not provided any Berkheimer proof under step 2B. Examiner notes Berkheimer evidence is not needed when the additional elements generally link the use of a judicial exception to a particular technological environment or when the additional elements are specified at a high level of generality, which is what the examiner has put on record. Nowhere in the previous rejections did the Examiner state that the additional elements performed well-understood, routine, and conventional computer activity. Therefore, the applicant’s argument is considered moot. Furthermore, the unconventional nature of the claims argued by the applicant is directed towards the abstract idea, which cannot render the claim as being significantly more than the abstract idea. While the claim does recite standardizing…the real-time hospital admission data from the plurality of formats into a standard format, the claim does not recite any computer functionality in what the standardization entails and does not recite the specific way in which the data is formatted. The limitation is recited as a high level and merely describes the standardization to include a patient identifier, which could be a name, at least one indicator of a disease of interest, which could be a symptom, and at least one admission date. The standardizing as claimed is no more than a minimum required data needed for a patient’s medical records, making this limitation abstract. The claim does not recite any data structures and does not describe any type of data structure processing in order for it to be considered an additional element. Therefore, the examiner maintains the claims are not significantly more than the abstract idea.
Conclusion
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/RESHA DESAI/ Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 3628
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