There is some concern here in Australia over a patent application lodged by the Pharmacy Guild of Australia over some rather generic features of EHRs. These concerns are reported here:
http://australianit.news.com.au/common/print/0,7208,11467621%5E15319%5E%5Enb%20v%5E15306,00.html or here: http://snipurl.com/atst The application has been lodged under the international PCT (patent co-operation treaty), and it appears that country level applications have been lodged in at least the UK, Canada and the US, as well as Australia. At a glance, there would not appear to be much in the way of novelty in the claims, and several groups here in Australia plan to lodge objections to the application. Others may wish to object to the applications in their own countries. If anyone can suggest clear prior art which was published before April 2002, and ideally before April 2001, then please let me know (or post details to this list so the prior art can be shared around). The details of the patent application, and a related one filed on the same date, are as follows: "METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR SHARING PERSONAL HEALTH DATA" can be found here: http://v3.espacenet.com/textdoc?CY=ep&LG=en&F=4&IDX=WO02073456&DB=EPODOC&QPN=WO02073456 or here: http://snipurl.com/atol Click on the tabs at the top to see the details of the patent claims. The details of the CR Group application for "METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR SECURE INFORMATION" can be found here: http://v3.espacenet.com/textdoc?DB=EPODOC&IDX=WO02073455&F=0 or here: http://snipurl.com/ator The filing dates for both are 14 march 2002, with earliest priority dates of 14 March 2001. Just to whet your appetite, here is Claim 1 of the Pharmacy Guild application: "CLAIMS : 1. A method for a health care provider to obtain personal health data relating to a consumer, the method comprising the steps of : the consumer causing personal health data to be stored in a secure repository, said repository requiring authentication of the consumer's identity before the consumer is provided access to the repository; the consumer selecting items of personal health data to share and identifying a health care provider, or class of health care providers, to whom access will be provided for those items of personal health data; a health care provider providing authentication of their identity to the consumer's secure repository and being provided access to those items of personal health data of the consumer for which the health care provider has been identified for sharing; the health care provider using the personal health data of the consumer to determine health care advice or the provision of a health care service for the consumer; and the health care provider recording details of the consultation and the advice or service provided to the consumer in the secure repository of health data of the consumer." If this patent issues, we (or our govts) may find ourselves having to pay royalties to the Pharmacy Guild of Australia to use any EHR applications which meet this description, or having to challenge the patent in court (expensive). Hence there is value in demolishing it with prior art in the application stage - assuming that it survives the examination phase (which it shouldn't, but as we know, the US patent office seems willing to approve a patent for just about anything, no matter how obvious or well-known the idea is, and the Australian patent office managed to issue an innovation patent for the wheel a few years ago...true!). Tim C -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 254 bytes Desc: OpenPGP digital signature URL: <http://lists.openehr.org/mailman/private/openehr-technical_lists.openehr.org/attachments/20041123/6137d5e1/attachment.asc>
