Cloud-like medical-information service

Abstract

The current document is directed to methods and systems for organizing, storing, searching, aggregating, and distributing large quantities of biological information obtained for individual patients. In one described implementation, the knowledge and information is stored, in data-storage facilities within cloud-computing-like systems, as clinical actions, biological elements, and variants that are logically linked together to form network-like data structures. Individual patient data and clinical-knowledge databases, including the network-like clinical-knowledge data structures, are hosted in cloud-computing-like data centers along with a variety of services that receive and process queries from users, medical-service providers, and electronic-health-record-based applications and that return requested information to the requesting entities. Despite the enormous amounts of patient data and clinical knowledge that may be stored in the cloud-computing-like data centers, certain implementations of the currently disclosed systems return responses to medical-information queries in under a second, with other implementations providing even faster query-processing turnaround times.

1 . A medical-information system comprising:
 networked servers and data-storage facilities within one or more computing facilities; and   computer instructions executed by the servers that control the medical-information system to
 receive a request message containing a query for information related to a patient and to one or more clinical actions. 
 access patient data, stored in the one or more computing facilities, corresponding to the patient, 
 access a clinical-knowledge database, stored in the one or more computing facilities, that includes clinical-action nodes, biological-element nodes, and variant nodes, 
 select candidate node sets from the clinical-knowledge database using information contained in the query, 
 evaluate the candidate node sets for relevance to the query by evaluating Boolean expressions contained in the candidate node sets and/or calling routines referenced from the candidate node sets that return Boolean values, 
 prepare a response message from information extracted from one or more relevant candidate node sets, and 
 return the response message to the user device in less than a maximum response time. 
   
     
     
         2 . The medical-information system of  claim 1   wherein a clinical-action node represents a clinical action; and   where clinical actions include
 prescribing medication, 
 diagnosing a set of symptoms, 
 determining one or more therapies, and 
 assessing risks associated with a patient's condition. 
   
     
     
         3 . The medical-information system of  claim 2   wherein the clinical-action node contains clinical information; and   wherein clinical information includes one or more of
 medication risks, 
 medication recommendations, 
 information that supports a diagnosis, 
 information that argues against a diagnosis, 
 information related to risks associated with the biological characterization of a patient, 
 information related to the effectiveness of different types of therapies, and 
 information related to the appropriate therapies corresponding to a diagnosis. 
   
     
     
         4 . The medical-information system of  claim 1  wherein each clinical action node includes data members, the data members including one or more data members selected from among:
 a data member which stores a name for the clinical action represented by the clinical action node; 
 a data member which stores a lower-case version of the name for the clinical action; 
 a data member which stores a status for the clinical-action node; 
 a data member which indicates a category of clinical-action nodes to which the clinical-action node belongs; 
 a data member which indicates a version of the clinical-action node; 
 a data member that includes a brief description of subject matter to which the clinical-action node pertains or which the clinical-action node represents; 
 a data member that indicates to which of various alternative clinical-knowledge-data-structure sets the clinical-action node belongs; 
 a data member which stores an alternative name for the clinical-action node that may be more understandable or acceptable to a patient; 
 a data member which indicates whether or not the clinical-action node contains sufficient information to be considered complete, for query-processing purposes; 
 a data member which contains a list of identifiers or addresses for biological elements referenced by the clinical-action node and therefore included in logic expressions representing subtrees of a general Boolean expression for the clinical-action node; 
 a data member which indicates any sex specificity associated with the clinical action represented by the clinical-action node; 
 a data member which contains information about any alerts associated with the clinical-action node; 
 a data member which includes an indication of the authoritative support for each of multiple different output texts; 
 a data member which stores multiple different output texts; 
 a data member which stores logic expressions; 
 a data member which stores article citations; 
 a data member which stores an indication of the population risk for a medical condition represented by the clinical-action node; 
 a data member which stores an indication of a risk for a medical condition; 
 a data member which stores an indication of a relative risk for a for a medical condition; 
 a data member which stores various types of notes and annotations that are associated with the clinical-action node; 
 a data member which stores references to various types of testing and simulation routines that can be used to test contents of the clinical-action node with respect to various types of queries and operations; 
 a data member which stores an indication of a developer or scientist who created the clinical-action node; and 
 a data member which stores a list of names of scientists, clinicians, and/or developers who have reviewed the clinical-action node. 
 
     
     
         5 . The medical-information system of  claim 4  wherein each clinical action node includes function members, including function members that retrieve values stored in data members and write values to data members, respectively. 
     
     
         6 . The medical-information system of  claim 4   wherein clinical action nodes are instantiated in server memories as objects; and   wherein derived clinical action nodes inherit data members and function members of one or more base clinical action nodes.   
     
     
         7 . The medical-information system of  claim 1   wherein a biological-element node represents a unit of biological information; and   where units of biological information include
 specific biopolymers, including proteins, lipids, polysaccharides, 
 small-molecule compounds, including metabolites, hormones, neurotransmitters, regulators, and signaling molecules, 
 genes, promotors, enhancers, and other functional portions of deoxyribonucleic-acid biopolymers, 
 various types of ribonucleic-acid biopolymers, 
 bacterial or eukaryotic organisms, 
 tissue types, and 
 organs and vessels. 
   
     
     
         8 . The medical-information system of  claim 7  wherein each biological-element node includes data members, the data members including one or more data members selected from among:
 a data member which stores a name for the biological element represented by the biological-element node; 
 a data member which stores a lower-case version of the name for the biological element; 
 a data member which stores a status for the biological-element node; 
 a data member which indicates a category of biological-element nodes to which the biological-element node belongs; 
 a data member which indicates a version of the biological-element node; 
 a data member that includes a brief description of subject matter to which the biological-element node pertains or which the biological-element node represents; 
 a data member that indicates to which of various alternative clinical-knowledge-data-structure sets the biological-element node belongs; 
 a data member which contains a list of identifiers or addresses for variant nodes referenced by the biological-element node; 
 a data member which contains a list of identifiers or addresses for clinical-action nodes referenced by the biological-element node; 
 a data member which stores logic expressions; 
 a data member which stores article citations; 
 a data member which stores various types of notes and annotations that are associated with the biological-element node; 
 a data member which stores references to various types of testing and simulation routines that can be used to test contents of the biological-element node with respect to various types of queries and operations; 
 a data member which stores an indication of a developer or scientist who created the biological-element node; and 
 a data member which stores a list of names of scientists, clinicians, and/or developers who have reviewed the biological-element node. 
 
     
     
         9 . The medical-information system of  claim 7  wherein each biological-element node includes function members, including function members that retrieve values stored in data members and write values to data members, respectively. 
     
     
         10 . The medical-information system of  claim 7   wherein biological-element nodes are instantiated in server memories as objects; and   wherein derived biological-element nodes inherit data members and function members of one or more base biological-element nodes.   
     
     
         11 . The medical-information system of  claim 1   wherein a variant node represents a different observed variant in a particular type of biological element.   
     
     
         12 . The medical-information system of  claim 11  wherein each variant node includes data members, the data members including one or more data members selected from among:
 a data member which stores a name for the variant represented by the variant node; 
 a data member which stores a lower-case version of the name for the variant; 
 a data member which stores a status for the variant node; 
 a data member which indicates a version of the variant node; 
 a data member that indicates to which of various alternative clinical-knowledge-data-structure sets the biological-element node belongs; 
 a data member which contains a list of identifiers or addresses for biological-element nodes referenced by the variant node; 
 a data member which stores article citations; 
 a data member which stores various types of notes and annotations that are associated with the variant node; 
 a data member which stores an indication of a developer or scientist who created the variant node; 
 a data member which stores a list of names of scientists, clinicians, and/or developers who have reviewed the variant node; 
 a data member which stores a name the biological element in which the variant occurs; 
 a data member which stores an ID the biological element in which the variant occurs; 
 an identifier of the variant; 
 one or more data members that provide a description of the variant with respect to biological element in which the variant occurs. 
 
     
     
         13 . The medical-information system of  claim 11  wherein each biological-element node includes function members, including function members that retrieve values stored in data members and write values to data members, respectively. 
     
     
         14 . The medical-information system of  claim 11   wherein variant nodes are instantiated in server memories as objects; and   wherein derived variant nodes inherit data members and function members of one or more base variant nodes.   
     
     
         15 . A method that returns information related to a patient in response to a query in a medical-information system implemented in networked servers and data-storage facilities within one or
 receiving a request message containing a query for information related to a patient and to one or more clinical actions,   accessing patient data, stored in the one or more computing facilities, corresponding to the patient;   accessing a clinical-knowledge database, stored in the one or more computing facilities, that includes clinical-action nodes, biological-element nodes, and variant nodes, selecting candidate node sets from the clinical-knowledge database using information contained in the query;   evaluating the candidate node sets for relevance to the query by evaluating Boolean expressions contained in the candidate node sets and/or calling routines referenced from the candidate node sets that return Boolean values.   preparing a response message from information extracted from one or more relevant candidate node sets, and   returning the response message to the user device in less than a maximum response time.   
     
     
         16 . The method of  claim 15  wherein selecting candidate node sets from the clinical-knowledge database using information contained in the query further includes:
 using information contained in the query to select one or more clinical-action nodes; and extracting the selected clinical-action nodes, along with those biological elements and variants that they directly and indirectly reference, as subtrees from the clinical-knowledge database. 
 
     
     
         17 . The method of  claim 15   wherein the logical expressions contained in a clinical-action node include terms related to patient data and biological elements; and   wherein, when a logical expression evaluates to TRUE, the clinical-action node is relevant to the query.   
     
     
         18 . The method of  claim 15   wherein the routines referenced from the clinical-action node that return a Boolean value include terms related to patient data and biological elements; and   wherein, when a routine referenced from the clinical-action node that returns a Boolean value returns the Boolean value TRUE, the clinical-action node is relevant to the query.   
     
     
         19 . The method of  claim 15  wherein the logical expressions contained in a biological-element node include terms related to variant nodes; and
 wherein, when a logical expression evaluates to TRUE, the biological-element node is relevant to the query. 
 
     
     
         20 . The method of  claim 15  wherein the maximum response time is one of:
 1 second; 
 0.5 seconds; 
 0.1 seconds; and 
 less than 0.1 seconds.