Medical network

Abstract

Methods for sharing medical costs between prospective patients seeking treatment, and existing patients of a medical network. Prospective patients may actively query medical costs for specific conditions and treatments for the specific conditions previously experienced by existing patients. Existing patients contributing to the documents accessible by the medical network may upload anonymous versions of EOBs, medical bills and medical documents to the medical network in exchange for rewards. The prospective patients may communicate and query the desired information using natural language inputs to instruct a client computing system to search the medical network for relevant treatment information. The prospective patient may use natural language commands or other inputs to filter the query results by condition, location, cost, quality of service, service provider, insurance provider, or any other parameter that may be detailed by the medical documents accessible through the medical network.

What is claimed: 
     
         1 . A method for sharing medical costs to a medical network comprising the steps of:
 accessing, by a computer system, a portal to the medical network;   inputting, by the computer system, a natural language command instructing an upload of an explanation of benefits (EOB) document to the medical network;   digitizing, by the computer system, the EOB document;   converting, by the computer system, text displayed by the EOB document to machine encoded text;   tagging, by the computer system, identifying properties of the EOB document;   anonymizing, by the computer system, confidential patient information provided within the EOB document;   uploading, by the computer system, a tagged EOB document to the medical network; and   receiving, by the computer system, reward points in exchanged for the tagged EOB document uploaded to the medical network.   
     
     
         2 . The method of  claim 1 , further comprising the steps of:
 inputting, by the computer system, a natural language query command;   searching, by the computer system, a data store of the medical network for tagged documents uploaded to the medical network;   prioritizing, by the computer system, results of the searching step as a function of a similarity to a patient's medical condition; and   retrieving, by the computer system, a prioritized list of the tagged documents, the tagged documents including a descriptor of a service performed and a price for performing the service performed.   
     
     
         3 . The method of  claim 2 , wherein the step of retrieving the results of the searching step further comprises exchanging the reward points prior to viewing the prioritized list of tagged documents. 
     
     
         4 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the identifying properties of the EOB document tagged by the computer system are selected from the group consisting of a service provided, condition treated, location, cost and service provider. 
     
     
         5 . The method of  claim 1 , wherein the step of anonymizing the EOB document includes inputting a second natural language command instructing the computer system to redact a selected portion of the EOB document. 
     
     
         6 . The method of  claim 1 , further comprising the step of storing the tagged EOB document to a data store of the medical network accessible to a plurality of members of the medical network, wherein the plurality of members of the medical network can download, retrieve or view the EOB document uploaded to the medical network. 
     
     
         7 . The method of  claim 2 , wherein the prioritized list of tagged documents includes a link to a treatment timeline having a sorted list of a plurality of EOBs uploaded by a member of the medical network, wherein the sorted list is sorted by date and includes a description of a treatment of a condition and costs for treating the condition from a start of the treatment of the condition to a conclusion of the treatment of the condition. 
     
     
         8 . The method of  claim 1 , further comprising providing at least one support service for at least one of creating, integrating, hosting, maintaining, and deploying computer-readable program code in a computer system, where the computer-readable program code in combination with the computer system is configured to implement the steps of accessing, inputting digitizing, converting, tagging, anonymizing, uploading and receiving.