Patent ID: 7711578
Filing Date: 2010-05-04
Classification: G06Q,G16H

Abstract:
1. A method of supporting routing of electronic communications among a caregroup, the method comprising: receiving, by a central service database of a communication service provider, information defining the caregroup, including members of the caregroup, a target of the caregroup and one or more administrating caregivers of the caregroup; receiving, by a scan upload module operable within a distribution server of the communication service provider, a digital representation of an annotated routing form from a hardcopy-based email appliance located remotely from the distribution server, the hardcopy-based email appliance operable to both accept hardcopy input from and produce hardcopy output for the target of the caregroup, the annotated routing form having a particular form type of a plurality of predetermined form types, one or more portions of the digital representation of the annotated routing form intended for email delivery to one or more of the members of the caregroup, the annotated routing form including thereon a set of item identification marks; reading, by an automated dispatching module operable within the distribution server, the set of item identification marks from the digital representation of the annotated routing form; determining, by the automated dispatching module, the particular form type of the annotated routing form and one or more characteristics of the annotated routing form based on the set of item identification marks, the one or more characteristics of the annotated routing form including information regarding a location of an address sector within the annotated routing form; attempting, by the automated dispatching module, to determine the one or more members of the caregroup by processing a portion of the digital representation corresponding to the location of the address sector; composing, by the automated dispatching module, a digital representation of a resulting message based at least in part upon the particular form type; if said attempting, by the automated dispatching module, to determine the one or more members of the caregroup is successful, then distributing, by the automated dispatching module, the digital representation of the resulting message by associating the digital representation of the resulting message with an email message addressed to email accounts of each of the one or more members of the caregroup; if said attempting, by the automated dispatching module, to determine the one or more members of the caregroup is inconclusive, then submitting, by the automated dispatching module, the digital representation of the annotated routing form to a human augmented dispatch system; and wherein the scan upload module and the automated dispatching module are implemented in one or more computer processors and one or more computer-readable storage media of the distribution server, the one or more computer-readable storage media having instructions tangibly embodied therein representing the scan upload module and the automated dispatching module that are executable by the one or more computer processors.