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  Method and a system for teaching and guiding an individual in changing the lifestyle and a method and system for treating an individualUSPTO Application #: 20070054252Title: Method and a system for teaching and guiding an individual in changing the lifestyle and a method and system for treating an individual Abstract: A method and a system for teaching and guiding an individual and changing the lifestyle and in building up a health or healthier behaviour includes the step of making a basic assessment of the individual and of defining at least one program to which the individual should attend on the basis of this assessment. The program includes at least teaching, guiding and actively involving the individual and individually gathering personal objective information represented by at least one health indicator. The individual is taught in accordance with a specific learning program in view of understanding a relationship between the objective information and a phenomenon or symptom caused by pathology or functional deficiency. The individual is further taught and guided to understand the effect of specific behaviour and lifestyle on the pathology or functional deficiency. Finally, actions are identified to be taken for changing the lifestyle and for building up a healthier behaviour in view of reducing health problems or health risks. (end of abstract) Agent: Shoemaker And Mattare, Ltd - Silver Spring, MD, US Inventor: Kin-Yuan Lin USPTO Applicaton #: 20070054252 - Class: 434247000 (USPTO) Related Patent Categories: Education And Demonstration, Physical Education The Patent Description & Claims data below is from USPTO Patent Application 20070054252. Brief Patent Description - Full Patent Description - Patent Application Claims
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0001] The invention relates to a method and a system for teaching and guiding an individual in changing the lifestyle and to a method and a system for treating an individual. [0002] Health care systems in most industrialised countries are in an urgent need for reforming. Costs for health care systems are continuously increasing. In parallel, health problems of societies are increasing rather than decreasing despite highly sophisticated medical systems. [0003] Mood disorder, diabetes, heart disease, hypertension and asthma caused 49% of U.S.A.'s health care expenses in 1996. According to U.S.A. CDC health people 2000 midcourse review, the determining factor of health related to lifestyle is 47%, related to environmental issues is 17% and to genetic issues is 25%. The contribution from medical services is only 11%. There is thus a major trend of lifestyle chronic diseases caused by improper lifestyle and living environment in the industrial countries. [0004] One known effective possibility for improving the health care system and decreasing the costs is to change the lifestyle and improper health behaviour of each individual. A concept for changing health behaviour has been proposed by Girdano and Dusec (Daniel A. Girdano, Dorothy A. Dusec, "Changing health behaviour", 1988, ISBN 0-89787-607-5). While this concept generally addresses change of health behaviour, nowadays, there are still no effective systems available for change of lifestyle and improper health behaviour. [0005] Ulwick et al (Anthony W. Ulwick, Clayton M. Christensen, Jerome H. Grossmann, "A prescription for health care cost reform", Strategy and Innovation, And newsletter from Harvard Business School Publishing and Innosight) discloses opportunities for giving consumers what the United States Health Care System does not do. A disruption of the Health Care Industries is proposed on the basis of providing general practitioners with a tool to treat maladies which previously required the intervention of highly trained surgeons or specialists, enabling nurses or physician assistants to perform activities in outpatient centres that are currently performed by hospital doctors or also by creating inexpensive products and services that enable individuals with less specialized training to accomplish tasks inexpensively and in a more convenient setting. Consumers could buy such services or products or learn to manage their health on their own. [0006] Herzlinger (Regina E. Herzlinger, "Lets put consumers in charge of health care", Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation Product no. 1415) deals with fragmentation of health care and suggests care teams for patients who need integrated coverage. [0007] While these known articles provide theoretical solutions for improving the health system, currently no practical systems and methods are available which focus on the unmet patient's and consumer's needs. [0008] It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a method and system which effectively allow individuals to have a better and healthier lifestyle and which help to reduce the cost and increase the effectiveness of the health care system. A method and system according to a further aspect of the invention should help to treat ill patients in a more integrated, convenient setting and help them to avoid costly interactions with the traditional health care system. The system and method according to the invention will eventually reduce the health care cost in most of the modern societies. According to a further aspect, the system and method shall also provide prevention against illnesses. [0009] According to the present invention, these and other objects are solved with a method and a system according to the independent patent claims. [0010] Starting from the above mentioned background of the invention, one important aspect of the invention are products and services that place the responsibility of health management and self care back into the hands of the consumers and empower them to take this responsibility. [0011] According to the first aspect of the invention, there is provided a method of teaching and guiding an individual in changing his or her lifestyle. The method is used to build up a healthy or healthier behaviour of the individual. According to the method of the invention, in a first step a basic assessment of the individual is made. During this assessment, specific lifestyle health problems or potential health risks of the individual are defined. The term of health problems or potential health risks includes specific health problems the individual is aware of, potential health risks the individual is aware of but also problems or health risks which may be unknown to the individual but which may cause a certain risk for the individual to develop health problems at a later stage. This basic assessment, a so called primary prevention screening, can be done in any easily accessible place, e.g. at the work place, a community based outpatient clinic or setting but also e.g. in a Drug Store. It can be operated by a general practitioner (GP). Such place may also be operated by a physician assistant or a professional nurse supervised by a general practitioner to reduce the operation cost. [0012] In answer to this basic assessment, at least one program is defined to which the individual should attend. Depending on the defined health problems or health risks, one or a plurality of teaching and/or learning programs are provided to the individual. [0013] Each of said programs includes teaching, guiding and actively involving the individual in individually gathering personal objective information represented by at least one health indicator. In particular, this is a health indicator which relates to the lifestyle health problem or potential health risks which have been identified during the basic assessment. By teaching, guiding and especially by actively involving the individual in gathering objective information, the knowledge and the awareness related to the specific lifestyle health problems are increased and the willingness of the individual to get deeply involved into the program is increased. In a further step, the individual is taught in accordance with a specific learning program in view of understanding a relationship between the objective information which has been previously gathered and a phenomenon or a symptom caused by pathology or by a functional deficiency in context with the health problem or the health risk. By this teaching step, the individual is given a tool to set a specific health problem or risk in context with the objective information previously gathered. [0014] In a further step, the individual is taught and guided in view of understanding the effect of a specific behaviour or a specific lifestyle on the pathology or functional deficiency in context with the health problem or the health risk. By this step, the individual begins to understand that by changing a specific behaviour or lifestyle, the individual can influence a pathological situation or a functional deficiency. [0015] In a further step, a realistic goal to be achieved by the individual at the end of the program under the support of the coach is set. [0016] In a final step, the individual is guided and taught to identify specific actions and how to carry out these actions which can be taken in view of improving the health, reducing health problems or reducing health risks, in particular by changing the lifestyle or building up a healthy or healthier behaviour. [0017] Conventional diagnosis and treatment done by a doctor or other health care professional is based on so-called SOAP notes. SOAP stands for Subjective, Objective, Assessment and Plan/Prescription. The initial portion of a SOAP note consists of subjective information verbally expressed by the patient. The next part of the notes includes objective observations. These observations include symptoms which can be measured or seen. Included in objective observations are also medical parameters such as temperature, pulse, respiration and the results of specific diagnostic tests. The objective observation is followed by assessment. Assessment is the diagnosis of the patient's condition. The last part of the SOAP note is a Plan or Prescription. The plan may include further tests, medication, treatments, education and referral of a patient. [0018] The whole process may last from a few minutes to an hour in most outpatient settings. The involvement from the patient side is very low. In addition to this, due to the intrinsic characteristics of most of the lifestyle health problems like precondition of hypertension and diabetes, unless in the severe or complex stage, the threat of the disease to the patient's daily life is not critical. Thus compliance with the medication or education prescription is generally low and the results are poor. SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION [0019] The present invention is based on the concept, that the individual is actively involved not only in the subjective step, but also in the subsequent O, A and P steps, except in the basic assessment. By involving the individual deeply in the overall process, the individual's knowledge and awareness of the health problems and counter solutions and the individual's willingness to comply with a plan is increased. Such a plan may include which medication shall be taken, how to take the medication or a change of the lifestyle. The whole strategy about actions and the reasons for these actions are revealed to the individual. The individual understands the causes for health problems or health risks (know why), and is actively involved in taking measures (know how), in order to improve the situation. At the end of the program the individual has all of the knowledge, responsibility and tool to control and manage his own health. [0020] In the step of defining actions, the individual may be taught in view of understanding short to medium term actions to be taken to relieve symptoms caused by said pathology or functional deficiency. The short medium term actions are developed according to evidence based clinical guidelines. This step including taking actions will increase the confidence, value and good feeling to the individual. [0021] The step of defining actions may further include guiding and teaching the individual to identify actions in view of a long term plan for improving the health or reducing health problems or risks. [0022] As mentioned in context with the background of the invention, lifestyle, environment and gene represent 89% of the determining factor for health. Each individual should completely know that his health status may gradually degrade from healthy to a precondition to develop a disease and finally develop into disease. Thus it is important to develop a set of health indicators to show the individual's actual location for an individual who seeks to thoroughly manage his or her own health. In particular this can be done by defining a location in three different health status'. Continue reading... Full patent description for Method and a system for teaching and guiding an individual in changing the lifestyle and a method and system for treating an individual Brief Patent Description - Full Patent Description - Patent Application Claims Click on the above for other options relating to this Method and a system for teaching and guiding an individual in changing the lifestyle and a method and system for treating an individual patent application. ###  How KEYWORD MONITOR works... a FREE service from FreshPatents1. Sign up (takes 30 seconds). 2. Fill in the keywords to be monitored. 3. Each week you receive an email with patent applications related to your keywords. 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