DETAILED ACTION
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 .
This is a first office action in response to the instant application for letters patent filed on 22 January 2024. Claims 1-20 are presented for examination.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 06/26/24, and 08/19/24 was filed before the mailing date of the first office action on the merits. The submission is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
the written description must clearly redefine the claim term and set forth the uncommon definition so as to put one reasonably skilled in the art on notice that the applicant intended to so redefine that claim term. Process Control Corp. v. HydReclaim Corp., 190 F.3d 1350, 1357, 52 USPQ2d 1029, 1033 (Fed. Cir. 1999). The term “pod” in claims 1 and 14 is indefinite because the specification does not clearly define the term.
The term “pod” in claims 1 and 14 is a relative term which renders the claim indefinite. The term “pod” is not defined by the claim, the specification does not provide a standard for ascertaining the requisite degree, and one of ordinary skill in the art would not be reasonably apprised of the scope of the invention.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 1, 3-6, 14, 16-19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Fan Xiaomao et al. hereinafter Fan “Toward Automated Analysis of ECG Big Data by Graphics Processing Unit for Mobile Health Application”, IEEE Access, Vol 5, pages 17136-17148, XP011660526, DOI: 10.1109/Access.2017.2743525. Retrieved on 2017-09-14.
As per claim 1, Fan teaches a plurality of nodes, one or more of the nodes executed by at least one of one or more CPUs and one or more GPUs (Fig. 2, Fig. 7, Fig. 8, p. 17138, 17140, 17143; the platform schedules the tasks on the nodes, which include each a CPU and a GPU), the plurality of nodes further comprising: “a plurality of worker nodes (Fig. 2, Fig. 7, Fig. 8. p. 17738, 17140, 17143; the platform schedules the tasks on the nodes, which include each a CFU and a GPU; the worker nodes are part of the plurality of nodes system where they are classified and each categorized node plays a different role such as master node or worker node etc.. “see Fan’s abstract that discusses classification accuracy”), each comprising at least one pod, each pod associated with an address and comprising one or more containers (inherent in HCloud discussed in Section A of Architecture of the Healthcare Platform) , each container comprising a run-time environment in which one or more EGG analysis applications are executed and associated with computational resources (the term "pod" is not defined (see 112 rejection above); it is understood to mean “point of delivery", i.e. as defined in Wikipedia, "a module of network, compute, storage, and application components that work together for deliver networking services”, in the present case, each node executes a task of ECG analysis as assigned by the platform, hence they have an address so that they can receive messages/tasks, and run an operating system which is a run-time environment) and a master node comprising a control plane configured to spin up and spin down the worker nodes, wherein spinning up the worker nodes uses the computational resources, the master node further configured for coordinate instantiation and lifecycle of the pods, which comprises coordinating execution of the ECG analysis applications associated with the worker nodes, comprising spinning up the nodes whose output is needed by other ones of the nodes before spinning up the other nodes needing the output, receiving a message regarding completion of the output, and spinning up the other nodes needing the output, wherein spinning up the other nodes after spinning up the nodes producing the output conserves the computational resources and allows to increase a number at the nodes producing the output that are spun up (Fig. 2, Fig. 7, Fig. 8, p. 17138, 17140, 177148; the platform coordinates/schedules the tasks on the nodes having CPLYGPU, hence these nodes are triggered run a task of ECG analysis without conflicting each other; It must be noted also this portion of the claim is inherent and part of sections A and B scheme od Fan’s system describing Architecture of Healthcare Platform and automated ECG analysis Algorithm).
As per claim 3, Fan teaches the system according to Claim 1, wherein the pods communicate with each other via a queuing service (see fig 8, queuing service).
As per claim 4, Fan teaches the system according to Claim 3, wherein spinning down one of the pods comprises retaining connection of the node associated with that pod to GPU or CPU executing the node (maintaining or breaking connections is part of Fan’s Schema to keep the system running as instructed.
As per claim 5, Fan teaches the system according to Claim 1, wherein the ECG analysis applications comprise a beat detector application, a noise detection application, an atrial fibrillation detection application, and a premature ventricular contraction detection application, file conversion application for third party analysis applications, and a file combining application that combines the output of other ones of the applications (see Fan p. 17142).
As per claim 6, Fan teaches the system according to Claim 5, wherein the nodes associated with the beat detector application and the noise detection application are spun up before the nodes associated with the atrial fibrillation detection application, the premature ventricular contraction detection application, the file conversion application, and the file combining application (it’s inherent in Fan’s monitoring system, detection and analysis; it must be noted also that beat detection must happen before any detection of atrial fibrillation can take place).
Claim 14 is a method of the system claim 1. They contain the same limitation. Therefore, they are rejected under the same rationale.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claim(s) 2, 7-13, 15, and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Fan and Jeon et al. hereinafeter Jeon PUB NUM 20240108290 A1
As per claim 2, Fan does not teach the system according to Claim 1, wherein the nodes associated with those of the ECG analysis applications utilizing artificial intelligence are executed by of the one or more of the GPUs. Jeon teaches this feature (see fig 7, par 0034 an AI based diagnosis algorithm for internal or external ECG data; see par 0019). It would be obvious to a skilled artisan at the effective time and date of the invention as claimed to combine Jeon’s system to Fan by incorporating AI through the monitoring and analysis involving ECG to enable remote and real-time monitoring (see Jeon par 0019).
As per claim 7, Jeon teaches the system according to Claim 1, further comprising: a cardiac monitor, comprising: at least one pair of ECG sensing electrodes; an ECG front end circuit interfaced to a microcontroller and configured to capture cardiac action potentials sensed by the pair of ECG sensing electrodes which are output as ECG signals; a wireless transceiver interfaced to the microcontroller; a memory interfaced to the microcontroller; and the microcontroller operable to execute under micro programmable control and configured to sample the electrocardiographic signals, to store each of the samples into the memory, and to transmit using the wireless transceiver to a server those of the samples that have not previously been transmitted to the server at a predefined frequency; one or more of the applications on one or more of the worker nodes configured to: receive a request for a real-time viewing of the samples from a third party computing device; send a command to the microcontroller via the wireless transceiver to increase the predefined frequency, wherein the microcontroller increases the frequency of the transmission upon a receipt of the command; and output the received samples to the third party computing device upon receipt of the samples from the cardiac monitor (see par 0017-0019, 0084, which disclose monitoring and wireless transmission).
As per claim 8, Jeon teaches the system according to Claim 7, wherein the predefined frequency comprises at least one of a time interval and a number of the samples recorded since a previous one of the transmissions (see Jeon par 0017-0019 and 0084).
As per claim 9, Fan teaches the system according to Claim 7, wherein outputting the samples comprises creating a graphical representation of the samples (see Jeon fig 2-3 and 8; see par 0082).
As per claim 10, Jeon teaches the system according to Claim 7, wherein the cardiac monitor transmits each of the samples after that sample is recorded at the increased frequency (see Jeon par 0017-0019 and 0084).
As per claim 11, Jeon teaches the system according to Claim 10, wherein the cardiac monitor does not perform any rhythm or beat detection analysis of the samples prior to transmitting them to the server (see Jeon par 0112-0114).
As per claim 12, Jeon teaches the system according to Claim 1, one or more of the applications on one or more of the worker nodes configured to: receive a sequence of values, each of the values representing a time difference between when a cardiac beat of a patient was recorded by a cardiac monitor and when a previous cardiac beat of the patient was recorded by the cardiac monitor; maintain a plurality of encoding tables, each encoding table comprising a plurality of codes, each of the codes associated with an upper value threshold and a lower value threshold; process some of the codes in the sequence, comprising the steps of: select one of the tables for encoding that value based on the previous two codes assigned; and encode that value with one of the codes in the selected table; and store the encoded data in a memory (see Jeon par 0082, 0107, 0109, and 0114).
As per claim 13, Jeon teaches the system according to Claim 1, one or more applications on one or more of the nodes further configured to: receive cardiac data of a patient of the patient contemporaneous to the cardiac data; analyze the received cardiac data and generate one or more alerts regarding the patient based on the analysis; identify the alerts as being false based on user input associated with the cardiac data; and pause analysis of further cardiac data of the patient for a predetermined amount of time (see Jeon par 0082, 0107, 0109, and 0114).
As per claim 15, see the rejection of claim 2.
As per claim 20, see the rejection of claim 7.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to FRANTZ B JEAN whose telephone number is (571)272-3937. The examiner can normally be reached 8-5 M-F.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Glenton B Burgess can be reached at 5712723949. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/FRANTZ B JEAN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2454