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 .
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 U.S.C. §101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more.
Step 1:
Claims 1-7 are directed to a method (i.e., a process), claims 8-13 are directed to a system (i.e., a machine), and claims 14-20 are directed to one or more non-transitory media (i.e., a machine). Accordingly, claims 1-20 are all within at least one of the four statutory categories.
Step 2A - Prong One:
Regarding Prong One of Step 2A, the claim limitations are to be analyzed to determine whether, under their broadest reasonable interpretation, they “recite” a judicial exception or in other words whether a judicial exception is “set forth” or “described” in the claims. An “abstract idea” judicial exception is subject matter that falls within at least one of the following groupings: a) certain methods of organizing human activity, b) mental processes, and/or c) mathematical concepts.
Representative independent claim 1 includes limitations that recite at least one abstract idea. Specifically, independent claim 1 recites:
1. A computer-implemented method, comprising:
generating a timeseries matrix, for a patient-condition complexity of a plurality of patient-condition complexities, that includes: a plurality of rows respectively representing a plurality of patient records corresponding to a plurality of patients and a plurality of columns respectively representing successive time periods of a sequence of time periods;
assigning values to a plurality of cells of a particular row, of the plurality of rows, corresponding to a particular patient record of the plurality of patient records, wherein the values represent a set of complexity scores:(a) for a corresponding set of time periods of the sequence of time periods; and (b) that indicate a corresponding set of levels of complexity of a patient condition that is associated with the set of time periods;
determining, via one or more hardware processors, a first set of values corresponding at least partially to a first set of blocking variables;
extracting a subset, of the plurality of rows, having or associated with a second set of values that meet a lexical similarity threshold in relation to the first set of values;
comparing a first set of information corresponding to one or more clusters, relating to one or more subsets of the plurality of patent records, to a second set of information corresponding at least partially to a first patient record; and
generating, via the one or more hardware processors and based on the comparing, one or both of (a) an indication of one or more clinical orders or future conditions associated with the first patient record and (b) at least one preventative intervention for a patient associated with the first patient record.
The Examiner submits that the foregoing underlined limitations constitute “a mental process” because generating a timeseries matrix, for a patient-condition complexity of a plurality of patient-condition complexities, that includes: a plurality of rows respectively representing a plurality of patient records corresponding to a plurality of patients and a plurality of columns respectively representing successive time periods of a sequence of time periods; assigning values to a plurality of cells of a particular row, of the plurality of rows, corresponding to a particular patient record of the plurality of patient records, wherein the values represent a set of complexity scores:(a) for a corresponding set of time periods of the sequence of time periods; and (b) that indicate a corresponding set of levels of complexity of a patient condition that is associated with the set of time periods; determining a first set of values corresponding at least partially to a first set of blocking variables; extracting a subset, of the plurality of rows, having or associated with a second set of values that meet a lexical similarity threshold in relation to the first set of values; and comparing a first set of information corresponding to one or more clusters, relating to one or more subsets of the plurality of patent records, to a second set of information corresponding at least partially to a first patient record amount to observations/evaluations/judgments/analyses that can, at the currently claimed high level of generality, be practically performed in the human mind or via pen and paper.
The Examiner submits that the foregoing underlined limitations of generating, based on the comparing, one or both of (a) an indication of one or more clinical orders or future conditions associated with the first patient record and (b) at least one preventative intervention for a patient associated with the first patient record constitute “certain methods of organizing human activity“ because they amount to managing personal behavior or relationships or interactions between people (including social activities, teaching, and following rules or instructions), at the currently claimed high level of generality.
Accordingly, the claim recites at least one abstract idea.
Step 2A - Prong Two:
Regarding Prong Two of Step 2A, it must be determined whether the claim as a whole integrates the abstract idea into a practical application. It must be determined whether any additional elements in the claim beyond the abstract idea integrate the exception into a practical application in a manner that imposes a meaningful limit on the judicial exception. The courts have indicated that additional elements merely using a computer to implement an abstract idea, adding insignificant extra solution activity, or generally linking use of a judicial exception to a particular technological environment or field of use do not integrate a judicial exception into a “practical application.”
The limitations of claims 1, 8, and 14, as drafted, is a process that, under its broadest reasonable interpretation, covers performance of the limitations in the mind and certain methods of organizing human activity but for the recitation of generic computer components. That is, other than reciting one or more hardware processors and one or more non-transitory media to perform the limitations, nothing in the claim elements precludes the steps from practically being performed in the mind or from being certain methods of organizing human activity. If a claim limitation, under its broadest reasonable interpretation, covers performance of the limitation in the mind and certain methods of organizing human activity but for the recitation of generic computer components, then it falls within the “Mental Processes” and “certain methods of organizing human activity“ groupings of abstract ideas. Accordingly, the claims recite an abstract idea.
This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application. In particular, the one or more hardware processors and one or more non-transitory media are recited at a high-level of generality (i.e., as generic computer components performing generic computer functions of generating data, assigning data, determining data, extracting data, and comparing data) such that it amounts no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using generic computer components. Accordingly, these additional elements do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because it does not impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea. The claims are directed to an abstract idea.
Thus, taken alone, the additional elements do not amount to significantly more than the above-identified judicial exception (the abstract idea). Looking at the limitations as an ordered combination adds nothing that is not already present when looking at the elements taken individually. For instance, there is no indication that the additional elements, when considered as a whole, reflect an improvement in the functioning of a computer or an improvement to another technology or technical field, apply or use the above-noted judicial exception to effect a particular treatment or prophylaxis for a disease or medical condition, implement/use the above-noted judicial exception with a particular machine or manufacture that is integral to the claim, effect a transformation or reduction of a particular article to a different state or thing, or apply or use the judicial exception in some other meaningful way beyond generally linking the use of the judicial exception to a particular technological environment, such that the claim as a whole is not more than a drafting effort designed to monopolize the exception (see MPEP § 2106.05). Their collective functions merely provide conventional computer implementation.
Claims 2-7, 9-13, and 15-20 are ultimately dependent from Claim(s) 1, 8, and 14 and include all the limitations of Claim(s) 1, 8, and 14. Therefore, claim(s) 2-7, 9-13, and 15-20 recite the same abstract idea. Claims 2-7, 9-13, and 15-20 describe further limitations regarding wherein the one or more subsets of the plurality of patent records correspond to the subset of the plurality of rows; wherein the patient and the first patient record correspond to a target patient and a target patient record, respectively; wherein the first set of values is determined based on the target patient record; utilizing a hashing function with respect to one or both of the target patient and the target patient record; determining a third set of values corresponding to a second set of blocking variables; and wherein the subset of the plurality of rows is extracted based on the subset of the plurality of rows including a fourth set of values that meet a numerical similarity threshold in relation to the third set of values. These are all just further describing the abstract idea recited in claims 1, 8, and 14, without adding significantly more.
The claims do 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 amount to no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using generic computer components. Mere instructions to apply an exception using a generic computer component cannot provide an inventive concept. The claims are not patent eligible.
Step 2B:
Regarding Step 2B, independent claims 1, 8, and 14 do not include additional elements (considered both individually and as an ordered combination) that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception for reasons the same as those discussed above with respect to determining that the claim does not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application.
Regarding the additional limitations directed to extracting a subset, all of which the Examiner submits merely add insignificant extra-solution activity to the abstract idea or are claimed in a merely generic manner (e.g., at a high level of generality), the Examiner further submits that such steps are not unconventional as they merely consist of storing and retrieving information in memory. See MPEP 2106.05(d)(II).
The dependent claims do not include additional elements (considered both individually and as an ordered combination) that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception for the same reasons to those discussed above with respect to determining that the dependent claims do not integrate the at least one abstract idea into a practical application.
Therefore, claims 1-20 are ineligible under 35 USC §101.
Subject Matter Free of Prior Art
Regarding independent claims 1, 8, and 14, the closest prior art, Lynn et al. (US 2009/0281838 A1), Lynn et al. (US 2009/0281839 A1) and Chaudhri et al. (CA 2831300 A1), does not teach or fairly suggest: extracting a subset, of the plurality of rows (respectively representing a plurality of patient records corresponding to a plurality of patients, of a timeseries matrix, for a patient-condition complexity of a plurality of patient-condition complexities and the matrix including a plurality of columns respectively representing successive time periods of a sequence of time periods), having or associated with a second set of values that meet a lexical similarity threshold in relation to the first set of values (corresponding at least partially to a first set of blocking variables).
As such, claims 1-20 are free of prior art.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. The cited but not applied prior art teaches a system and method for facilitating outcome-based health care (US 2013/0191162A1); "Mining recent temporal patterns for event detection in multivariate time series data" (Batal, Iyad, et al.); and "Bag-of-words representation for biomedical time series classification" (Wang, Jin, et al.).
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/LENA NAJARIAN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3687
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