Abstract:
The main thrust of the present invention is to help pharmaceutical companies and medical device manufacturers (“pharma”) market their products more effectively to physicians (“Service Providers”). Products can be drugs, medical devices or health services that are used by physicians to treat patients. In the present invention, profile of a physician&#39;s treatment patterns, medications prescribed, services rendered, and other indices of physician practice are determined from an electronic health records (EHR) database that is then matched with the rules defined by pharma to determine the most relevant physician target for their product before displaying the product information (“Advertisement”) to the physician. Product Advertisements are shown in the same user interface that the physician uses to interact with the EHR database. Interacting with the displayed Advertisement, the physician can obtain additional product information from the system. Alternatively, through the Advertisement, the physician can also setup other means of communication with pharma to obtain more product information such as direct encounters with SRs or e-Detailing.

Description:
CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS  
       [0001]     This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/731,101 filed Oct. 29, 2005. the contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference. This application further claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/762,612 filed Jan. 28, 2006. the contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference. This application further claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/762,606 filed Jan. 28, 2006. the contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference. 
     
    
     BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION  
       [0002]     1. Field of the Invention  
         [0003]     The invention relates generally to advertising and/or marketing to service providers. For example, the invention may relate to the field of marketing products from pharmaceutical companies and medical device manufacturers to physicians.  
         [0004]     2. Description of the Related Art  
         [0005]     The traditional sales force model for pharmaceutical companies and medical device manufacturers (hereafter referred to collectively as “pharma”) in which sales representatives (SRs) provide information about products to physicians during direct encounters is fraught with inherent inefficiencies. This process called detailing is the interaction between a physician and SR in which the SR provides information about a product that the SR&#39;s company would like the physician to utilize. Given physicians&#39; hectic schedules, it is reported that SRs detail physicians successfully only 12.5% of their intended interactions, with interactions lasting no longer than an average of two minutes. This results in an ineffective utilization of the SR&#39;s effort in accessing the physician and then allowing him only a brief encounter to provide relevant information. In addition, over the past 5 years, pharma have doubled their sales forces despite physician growth of only 15%, in an attempt to increase the interaction between SRs and physicians. However, this dramatic increase in the size of the sales forces has not been matched with appropriate levels of marketing training. This has resulted in SRs being able to provide only limited relevant information about products to physicians. This is further compounded by the fact that newer pharmaceuticals and devices are far more targeted for specific disease treatments and concomitantly require a higher level of skilled and trained SRs. This leads to physician frustration in dealing with SRs during brief detailing encounters, leaving physicians far less than optimally informed.  
         [0006]     Against this backdrop, pharmaceutical companies are pursuing new and innovative techniques to detail physicians. One of the techniques is called electronic detailing (e-Detailing).  
         [0007]     e-Detailing is a technology-based solution for providing product information and promotional material to physicians. It has evolved rapidly, over the past several years, and currently uses multiple channels of interaction (e.g. internet, video conferencing, etc.) to provide product information. Physicians can choose to engage in and learn about new pharmaceutical drug information at their own convenience. Pharma typically invites a chosen group of physicians to participate in an e-Detailing program. e-Detailing with its flexibility and convenience can be a relatively inexpensive and effective approach that can complement traditional detailing done by SRs.  
         [0008]     For detailing, by direct encounter or by e-Detailing, to be useful and productive to both pharma and physicians, a dynamic understanding of physician practice patterns and behavior is critical. A physician practice profile (PPP) is an instrument which would provide information regarding physician treatment patterns, procedures performed, medications prescribed, as well as other indices of physician practice patterns. PPPs would change with time based on the changing patient demographics, newer therapeutic procedures and practices. A dynamic knowledge of a PPP would enable a pharma to segment the physician population for targeted marketing of their products. Direct encounters between SRs and physicians or e-Detailing encounters make it inherently very difficult to determine a PPP, let alone to know how it evolves over time.  
         [0009]     Pharma currently use static data to determine product usage. Historically, new and overall prescription data obtained from pharmacy resellers has been used to gain understanding of product usage. Of late, there are some proposals about obtaining more patient-specific information from submitted pharmacy claims of prescriptions. Pharmacy benefit managers serve to link pharmacy claims data from different sources before transmitting them to the health insurance companies. They make this de-identified (de-identification involves the removal of confidential information such as name, address from the patient record and assigning a new and unique identifier) patient-specific data available commercially to pharma. This data, however, has only patient and physician identifiers, and drug and dosage information. It does not contain information on diagnoses, medical services provided or physician prescribing practices. Furthermore, this data does not provide insight into the practice profiles of physicians or how these profiles change over time. Health insurance companies can integrate medical and pharmacy claims data but the process is inherently challenging and untimely since the insurance claims data are usually available only after a 4 to 6 month time lag. Although the integrated claims data are rich in diagnoses, medical services and other information, the data lacks physician identifiers. It can be used for patient segmentation and prioritization but it is not useful for physician segmentation or building a PPP.  
         [0010]     A way to address the difficulty of obtaining a PPP is to derive it from a physician utilized electronic health records (EHR) system. A well-designed physician utilized EHR system would allow physicians to interact with their patients health records efficiently and also generate rich longitudinal data on patient diagnoses, medical procedures and services performed, medications prescribed, and other indices of physician practice pertaining to patient care. It would be useful, therefore, to integrate an EHR system with a system that would provide relevant pharma product information to physicians. This would allow physicians and patients to benefit by allowing efficient access to health records in a paperless environment. In addition, it would allow pharma to benefit by allowing them dynamic insight into PPPs. This would then enable pharma to provide physician with relevant and timely product information which could be used to enhance the experience provided by direct encounters with SRs or by e-Detailing.  
       SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION  
       [0011]     Systems and methods consistent with the present invention address the pharmaceutical product marketing needs stated before by using an electronic health records (EHR) system for determining relevant product information which is then presented to a physician on the same system user interface (UI) he uses to interact with the EHR system.  
         [0012]     The invention includes a computer system, on which there is a method comprising: providing a medical practice network structured and arranged for creating a physician practice profile and providing a pharmaceutical network structured and arranged for generating advertisements based on the physician practice profile.  
         [0013]     The invention further comprises a physician practice management database in communication with the medical practice network.  
         [0014]     The invention further comprises an electronic health records database in communication with the medical practice network.  
         [0015]     The invention further comprises a rules and advertisements database in communication with the pharmaceutical network.  
         [0016]     The invention further includes an apparatus, comprising a means for providing a medical practice network structured and arranged for creating a physician practice profile  
         [0017]     The invention further includes an apparatus, comprising a means for providing a pharmaceutical network structured and arranged for generating advertisements based on the physician practice profile.  
         [0018]     The invention further includes a computer system, comprising: a processor; and a memory in communication with the processor, the memory having stored thereon a set of data and instructions which, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to perform the steps of: providing a medical practice network structured and arranged for creating a physician practice profile and providing a pharmaceutical network structured and arranged for generating advertisements based on the physician practice profile.  
         [0019]     The invention further includes a computer readable medium having stored thereon instructions which, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to perform the steps: providing a medical practice network structured and arranged for creating a physician practice profile and providing a pharmaceutical network structured and arranged for generating advertisements based on the physician practice profile.  
         [0020]     The invention further includes a method, comprising: providing a medical practice network structured and arranged for creating a physician practice profile and providing a pharmaceutical network structured and arranged for generating advertisements based on the physician practice profile.  
         [0021]     The invention further includes a method, comprising: establishing an electronic record or medium for maintaining and/or administering client services given by a provider; generating indices of services corresponding to said client services given by the provider; and directing solicitations to said provider based on said indices of services.  
         [0022]     The invention further includes a computer assisted method, comprising: establishing an electronic record or medium for maintaining and/or administering client services given by a provider; generating indices of services corresponding to said client services given by the provider; and directing solicitations to said provider based on said indices of services.  
         [0023]     The invention further includes an apparatus, comprising: means for establishing an electronic record or medium for maintaining and/or administering client services given by a provider;  
         [0024]     The invention further includes means for generating indices of services corresponding to said client services given by the provider; and  
         [0025]     The invention further includes means for directing solicitations to said provider based on said indices of services.  
         [0026]     The invention further includes a computer system, comprising: means for establishing an electronic record or medium for maintaining and/or administering client services given by a provider;  
         [0027]     The invention further includes means for generating indices of services corresponding to said client services given by the provider; and means for directing solicitations to said provider based on said indices of services.  
         [0028]     The invention further includes 1) a method as disclosed and illustrated herein, 2) an apparatus as disclosed and illustrated herein, 3) a computer assisted method as disclosed and illustrated herein, 4) a network as disclosed and illustrated herein, and 5) a method for advertising as disclosed and illustrated herein. 
     
    
     BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS  
       [0029]      FIG. 1  illustrates an embodiment of a physician practice network environment with an information management system in accordance with the invention.  
         [0030]      FIG. 2  illustrates an embodiment of an electronic health records (EHR) database and the types of data it contains.  
         [0031]      FIG. 3  illustrates an embodiment of the login window for physicians in a web browser to access the information management system that the physicians&#39; network uses.  
         [0032]      FIG. 4  illustrates an embodiment of the “home” page for a physician after he logs in successfully.  
         [0033]      FIG. 5  illustrates an embodiment of a physician practice network environment with the System that can determine relevant pharmaceutical Advertisements from pharmaceutical companies and serve to different physicians in the network.  
         [0034]      FIG. 6  illustrates an embodiment of a flow diagram of the stages involved in determining relevant Advertisements.  
         [0035]      FIG. 7  illustrates an embodiment of the physician “home page” window rendered with relevant Advertisements determined by the system. 
     
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION  
       [0036]     The invention can be thought of in its most general embodiment, as using a electronic record or medium( for example, electronic health record) which engages service providers (for example, physicians) during their interaction with such a device. This allows a forum in which advertisement can be included for the purposes of informational content or sales.  
         [0037]     Further, the invention can also be thought of as a broader concept, where an electronic record or medium aids in the maintenance and administration of client services given by providers and enables generation of indices of that provider&#39;s practice profile and allows specific solicitation directed to that provider based on these indices of practice. A specific application of this concept is detailed in this description as pertaining to electronic health records, physicians, and pharma.  
         [0038]     Referring to the figures appended hereto, embodiments of the invention will be described in detail herein. It is to be understood that the figures and descriptions set forth herein of the present invention have been simplified to illustrate elements that are relevant for a clear understanding of the present invention, while eliminating, for purposes of clarity, other elements that may be typically found in a system incorporating the invention and/or a computer or computer network capable of implementing such a system. For example, specific operating system details and modules are not shown. Also, specific network items, such as, for example, network routers, are not shown. Those of ordinary skill in the art will recognize that other elements may be desirable to produce an operational system incorporating the present invention. However, because such elements are well known in the art, and because they do not facilitate a better understanding of the present invention, a discussion of such elements is not provided herein.  
         [0039]     The present invention involves methods and system for determining relevant pharma product information (“Advertisements”) to be presented to physicians on the same user interface (UI) that is used to interact with an EHR system. Using the information contained in the EHR database about the patient diagnoses, procedures performed, medications prescribed, or other indices of physician practices, a detailed PPP is developed. The practice profile for any given physician can change over time; therefore, the system would periodically update the profiles for physicians to reflect the most recent practice patterns. Pharmaceutical companies would provide Advertisements and a set of rules under which they should be shown to a physician. The system would then compare the rules with the practice profile for a physician to determine the most relevant Advertisements that are then rendered to the UI.  
         [0040]     Although the PPP is an instrument which can contain information about multiple indices of practice, it can be as simple as a single descriptor such as “specialty”. For example, if Dr. Alice Stone is a cardiologist, then the simplest PPP for this physician would be that her specialty is cardiology and site directed Advertisements that are specific to cardiology would be generated. A PPP can, therefore, include multiple indices of practice or simply limited to single descriptors, and can extend to any level of complexity as indices of practice profile are generated or derived over time.  
         [0041]     People skilled in the art will recognize that many other implementations are possible, consistent with the present invention.  
         [0000]     A. Physician Practice Network Environment  
         [0042]      FIG. 1  shows an exemplary environment of a medical practice network  100  in which there can be one or more physicians who may not be located at the same physical location at any given time. A medical practice network  100  can be a business entity like a group practice or a group of physicians who may practice within a hospital network. An information management system  120  comprises two databases  109 ,  110  and a web server  106  in an embodiment of the invention. The information management system  120  is used to manage the practice management database  109  and the EHR database  110 . An EHR database would enable a physician to create, store and retrieve patient records, order treatments and prescriptions for patients, etc. Practice Management Database  109  contains data specific to the operations of the network of physicians including, for example, contact management, billing, accounts payable, etc. One skilled in the art can see readily that the information management system  120  can have many different configurations with one or more databases, one or more application servers and one or more web servers providing the same functionality to individual physicians as delineated herein. In one embodiment of the medical practice network  100 , a physician  101  can interact with the EHR database  110  or the Practice Management Database  109  using a web browser  111  that runs on a client device  103  that connects to the Internet  112  using a network  104 . Web browser  111  is a standard web browser such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Netscape that provides a uniform user interface to physicians to access the information management system  120 . A client device  103  can be a point-of-care device such as a tablet PC, PDA or can be a desktop PC or laptop PC that has a web browser  111  installed on it. Network  104  can be a LAN or a wireless network that connects to the Internet  112 . Web server  106  can communicate with the databases  109  and  110  and connects to the Internet  112  using connection  105 . Web server  106  mediates the data flow securely to and from the databases  109 ,  110  and the various web browsers  111  on the physician client devices  103 .  
         [0043]      FIG. 2  shows the different types of data that may be contained in the EHR database  110 . Physician Information table  202  contains data pertaining to each physician including name, specialty, sub-specialty, and other physician identifiers. Patient Demographics table  203  contains the demographic data including but not limited to name, address, age, gender for each patients that are treated by the physicians in the medical practice network  100 . Active Problems List  204  table contains a running list of observations and diagnoses recorded by physicians for each of the patients. Procedures table  206  will contain procedures or services performed by the physician for a patient. Prescriptions table  205  contains the history of medications that were prescribed for each patient by the physicians. Those skilled in the art will recognize readily that the list of tables shown in the EHR database  110  is but a partial list of patient and practice specific information that may be stored in an EHR database. Patient data in the EHR database is confidential and is maintained according to the HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) rules for data security and confidentiality.  
         [0044]      FIG. 3  shows an embodiment of a web browser login window  301  using which a physician  101  can login to access data from databases  109  and  110 . The main elements of the login window  301  are a URL input element  302  to key-in the web site address of the web server  106 , a user name input element  303 , a password input element  304  and a login button  305 . A physician would key-in his user id (e.g. “tbrady”) and a correct password in  303  and  304  respectively and upon clicking the login button  305 , the web server would verify the correctness of the user id and password before displaying the exemplary homepage window  401 .  
         [0045]      FIG. 4  shows an embodiment of a home page window for a user whose name (e.g. “Thomas Brady, MD”) is indicated  403 . The main elements in this window may include, for example, a toolbar  404 , “WORKLIST”  405  and “APPOINTMENTS”  406  and the logout button  408 . The toolbar  404  is a standard web browser navigational device known to those skilled in the art and allows a user to access different data from the databases  109  and  110 . “WORKLIST”  405  indicates all the pending tasks that the physician needs to address. The tasks are those that pertain to patient care, e.g. new patient or office visits, patient requests for prescription refills and referrals, etc. “APPOINTMENTS”  406  will show all the appointments that the physician has on that particular day. Data for “WORKLIST”  405  is accessed from the EHR database  110  while data for “APPOINTMENTS”  406  comes from the Practice Management Database  109 . When a physician  101  clicks on the logout button  408  the current browser session will be disconnected securely from the web server  106 .  
         [0046]      FIG. 5  illustrates an embodiment of a System  500  that interacts with both the Physician Practice Network Environment  100  through connection  502  which is in communication with, for example, an advertisement server and the pharmaceutical companies  520  via the connection  513  to enable the pharmaceutical companies to provide relevant product information to the physicians  101  in the network.  
         [0047]     Practice Profile Generator (PPG)  504  is a system component that can generate a practice profile for a physician based on a set of rules. On a periodic basis (e.g. once a week), PPG would query the EHR database  110  to obtain for each physician in the network  100  a profile that shows patterns in demographics of the patients treated by that physician, medications provided, procedures performed, etc. For example, it may turn out that Dr. John Smith is a cardiologist who treats mostly middle-aged men with Type 2 diabetes for heart conditions. He has been prescribing drugs for hypertension. On the other hand, another physician, Dr. Alice Stone who is also a cardiologist performs mainly angioplasty and stent procedures. After PPG  504  generates these profiles for each of the physicians, it stores them in the database  506 . With changing patient demographics, new treatments that may come about in time and for various other reasons, physician practice profiles (PPP) can change in time but at any given instant they can be used to characterize a physician&#39;s medical practice behavior to be able to provide to them relevant information on existing and new products from pharmaceutical companies. The practice profile data in the database  506  does not contain any information, confidential or otherwise, on individual patients belonging to the network  100 . The data in the database  506  therefore is not subject to HIPAA regulations.  
         [0048]     Pharma  520  can enter a set of rules as well as all the product information (“Advertisement”) into the Rules and Advertisement Management (RAM)  512  component in the system. A rule is a set of conditions under which an Ad may be shown to a physician. A rule can be as straightforward as having a single condition that the specialty of the physician needs to be met for a given Advertisement to be shown (e.g. a pharmaceutical company may want a specific Advertisement for their heartburn drug to be shown only to gastroenterologists). A more involved rule would be that an Advertisement for a drug be shown to only cardio-thoracic surgeons performing coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) procedures who have also prescribed drugs preventing perioperative blood loss. RAM  512  would allow a pharmaceutical company to define the rules and also modify them in time. These Ad rules would allow pharmaceutical companies to better target their products to a physician clientele that would be far more effective than any of the existing drug marketing techniques.  
         [0049]     RAM  512  stores all the rules and the product information material (Advertisement material) in the database  510 . Product information material includes, but is not limited to image, audio-visual, and pdf files that may be rendered or shown in a standard web browser such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Netscape. The database  510  where these files as well as the ad rules are stored can be a relational database such as Oracle or DB2.  
         [0050]     Advertisement Server  508  performs the function of comparing the physician practice profile for a specific physician that has logged in using web browser  111  by accessing the database  506  with the Advertisement rules stored in the database  510  to find a match. Upon finding the match, the Advertisement Server  508  will render the corresponding Advertisement material from the database  510  to the web browser  111 .  
         [0000]     B. System Operation  
         [0051]      FIG. 6  is a flow diagram of an exemplary method for determining if an Advertisement is relevant and rendering it to the web browser using which a physician is currently accessing the EHR and PPM databases  109  and  110 .  
         [0052]     In Stage  601  of the process, the Advertisement Server  508  is provided with the physician login information from the login window  301 . The Advertisement Server  508  which then accesses the database  506  to obtain the latest practice profile for that particular physician (Stage  602 ) and compares with all the rules stored in the database  510  (Stage  603 ). In Stage  604 , the advertisement Server  508  will determine if there is match between the practice profile and an Ad rule. If there is a match (Stage  605 ), it will render the Advertisement or a plurality of Advertisements to the web browser  401 .  
         [0053]     Advertisement  707  displayed in the web browser  401  can be of two kinds, (a) informational or (b) interactive. If the Advertisement  707  is informational, when a physician clicks on  707 , the Advertisement Server  508  will obtain from the database  510  additional informational files to be rendered in the web browser  401 . If, on the other hand, the Ad  707  is interactive in nature, web browser  401  will connect via connection  503  to a web site belonging to the pharmaceutical company or one of its designated agent&#39;s (e.g. an e-Detailing company) website. A connection of this sort can be used to provide information in real time or to contact a sales rep belonging to the pharmaceutical company.  
         [0054]     Consistent with the present invention, the Advertisement Server  508  can render relevant pharmaceutical Advertisements  707  to any web page constructed by the web server  106  and presented in the web browser  111  on the physician&#39;s client-device  103 . The Advertisement Server  508  can also provide the relevant pharmaceutical Advertisements as pop-ups in the web browser  111  on the physician&#39;s client-device  103 .  
         [0055]     Whereas particular embodiments of this invention have been described above for purposes of illustration, it will be evident to those skilled in the art that numerous variations of the details of the present invention may be made without departing from the invention as disclosed and described herein and as defined in the appended claims.