The future of EEG-based personal devices monitoring brain function: Key neurotechnology patent #26

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medical communication device
– Illus­tra­tive image from U.S. Patent No. 7,138,902

Today we high­light a very inter­est­ing 2006 patent assigned to Phillips and Accen­ture — who have been col­lab­o­rat­ing  to devel­op soft­ware for EEG-based oper­a­tion of home appli­ances to aid patients suf­fer­ing from neu­ro­gen­er­a­tive dis­eases such as ALS (amy­otroph­ic lat­er­al sclerosis).

U.S. Patent No. 7,138,902: Per­son­al med­ical com­mu­ni­ca­tion device and system

  • Assignee(s): Phillips, Accenture
  • Inventor(s): Ray­mond J. Menard
  • Tech­nol­o­gy Cat­e­go­ry: EEG
  • Issue Date: Novem­ber 21, 2006

SharpBrains’ Take:

The ‘902 patent relates to tech­niques and sys­tems for per­son­al med­ical devices, evi­denc­ing the trend (as described in Back­ground of the Spec­i­fi­ca­tion) of the expan­sion of med­ical ser­vice deliv­ery from strict­ly with­in med­ical cen­ters into the homes and/or mobile lifestyles of patients. Some embod­i­ments of the dis­closed sys­tem relate to a first per­son­al device that mon­i­tors brain func­tion with EEG detec­tors and com­mu­ni­cates wire­less­ly with a sec­ond, short-range device. The sys­tem may be used for remote med­ical mon­i­tor­ing, although the scope of the claims (such as the illus­tra­tive claim pro­vid­ed below) does not explic­it­ly lim­it the sys­tem’s appli­ca­tions as such. Indeed, the ‘902 patent was ini­tial­ly assigned to Philips’ Nether­lands sub­sidiary, which recent­ly announced a part­ner­ship with Accen­ture (anoth­er top assignee in this report) to devel­op soft­ware for EEG-based oper­a­tion of home appli­ances to aid patients suf­fer­ing from neu­ro­gen­er­a­tive dis­eases such as ALS (amy­otroph­ic lat­er­al scle­ro­sis). The com­mer­cial­iza­tion of the sys­tems described in the ‘902 patent, the exten­sive claim set (span­ning 57 claims includ­ing four inde­pen­dent claims), and the dis­clo­sure in the trend­ing field of home-based med­ical appli­ca­tions and mon­i­tor­ing are among the fac­tors mak­ing the ‘902 patent a key neu­rotech­nol­o­gy patent.

Abstract:

A per­son­al and/or insti­tu­tion­al health and well­ness com­mu­ni­ca­tions sys­tem, which may be used for a vari­ety of emer­gency and non-emer­gency sit­u­a­tions using two-way com­mu­ni­ca­tion devices and a bi-direc­tion­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion net­work. In one appli­ca­tion two-way pagers are adapt­ed for use in the sys­tem. In one appli­ca­tion cel­lu­lar devices are adapt­ed for use in the sys­tem. In one appli­ca­tion an assist­ed liv­ing response cen­ter is estab­lished using var­i­ous embod­i­ments of the present per­son­al and/or insti­tu­tion­al com­mu­ni­ca­tions sys­tem. The sys­tem pro­vides mul­ti­ple lev­els of pri­or­i­ti­za­tion, authen­ti­ca­tion of per­son (task, step, process or order), and con­fir­ma­tion via inter­ro­ga­tion of per­son, device, or relat­ed mon­i­tor. One embod­i­ment pro­vides a method for receiv­ing, eval­u­at­ing and respond­ing to calls received from a sub­scriber, patient, relat­ed par­ty, or health care provider or health care system.

Illus­tra­tive Claim 1. A bi-direc­tion­al wire­less com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tem comprising:

(a) a first per­son­al device, the first per­son­al device fur­ther comprising:

  1. a proces­sor;
  2. a mem­o­ry;
  3. a pow­er supply;
  4. at least one detec­tor input; and
  5. a short-range bi-direc­tion­al wire­less com­mu­ni­ca­tions module;

(b) a sec­ond device com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the first device, the sec­ond device hav­ing a short-range bi-direc­tion­al wire­less com­mu­ni­ca­tions mod­ule com­pat­i­ble with the short-range bi-direc­tion­al wire­less com­mu­ni­ca­tions mod­ule of the first device; and

c) a secu­ri­ty mech­a­nism gov­ern­ing infor­ma­tion trans­mit­ted between the first per­son­al device and the sec­ond device.

To learn more about mar­ket data, trends and lead­ing com­pa­nies in the dig­i­tal brain health space –dig­i­tal plat­forms for brain/ cog­ni­tive assess­ment, mon­i­tor­ing and enhance­ment– check out this mar­ket report. To learn more about our analy­sis of 10,000+ patent fil­ings, check out this IP & inno­va­tion neu­rotech report.