Displaying a medical workflow: non-technical

The application underlying this decision relates to displaying a medical workflow. However, the European Patent Office refused to grant a patent since claim 1 mainly addresses the displaying of information in terms of a menu. Here are the practical takeaways of the decision T 1743/19 (Possible next actions/CAREFUSION303) of March 4, 2022 of Technical Board of Appeal 3.5.05:

Key takeaways

The invention

The application underlying the present decision mainly concerns displaying changes in workflows performed by health care workers, like nurses etc. Since the order of tasks in a workflow may change, the present application suggests using predictions to be able to display the correct order of tasks within a workflow (cf. paras. [002] and [002] of the application).

Fig. 1 of WO 2011/087710 A2

Here is how the invention is defined in claim 1 of the main request:

Is it technical?

Both the Board in charge and the Appellant considered that the closest prior art document D2 fails to teach the characterizing portion of claim 1:

1.1 The appellant considers all the features in the characterising part of claim 1 of the main request to be distinguishing features over D2, which reads as follows:

“predicting comprises using information related to past actions by the healthcare worker for predicting the healthcare worker’s workflow, and associating probabilities with actions possible by the healthcare worker; and

prioritizing display of possible next actions in the menu using the probability values associated with said actions”

1.2 Whereas D2 predicts the next possible actions in a healthcare worker’s workflow based on known ordered activities or tasks (see D2, [0081] and [0082]), the claimed method predicts the next possible actions using the healthcare worker’s past actions, which the appellant emphasises in its submissions are “medical” past actions, and displays these actions in a menu prioritised according to their associated probabilities.

According to the Appellant, the distinguishing features would reduce errors and improve efficiency on the part of healthcare workers during the time in which healthcare workers became accustomed to upgrades or changes to existing healthcare configurations. Moreover, flexibility in conducting workflows would be improved:

1.3.1 The appellant argued that errors were reduced and efficiency increased on the part of healthcare workers during the time in which healthcare workers became accustomed to upgrades or changes to existing healthcare configurations. …

1.3.2 Referring to paragraph [0022] of the description, the appellant argued that the need for a healthcare worker to follow only a single specific sequence of actions was eliminated. It reiterated at the oral proceedings that the distinguishing features gave the healthcare worker more flexibility. …

However, the Board found that the distinguishing features would only relate to the presentation of information. To counter this, the Appellant argued that displaying information may contribute to the technical character under exceptional circumstances as follows:

1.3.5 In its letter of reply to the board’s preliminary opinion, the appellant argued that the menu according to claim 1 placed the user in a favourable position to carry out the technical task of selecting a next option from the menu guiding the user through a workflow and submitted that in previous decisions of the boards of appeal, a GUI placing the user in a favourable position to carry out a technical task had been regarded as technical. It is evident that the appellant was referring to the established test that a presentation of information might exceptionally contribute to the technical character of an invention if it credibly assists the user in performing a technical task by means of a continued and guided human-machine interaction process (see e.g. T 1091/17, point 1.7 of the Reasons). …

The Board did not follow this argument since selecting something from a menu would be a non-technical task:

1.3.5 … Nevertheless, the case at hand fails this test at the very outset since selecting from a menu is not a technical task, contrary to the appellant’s argument.

Thus, the Board in charge concluded that the distinguishing features of claim 1 are of non-technical nature:

1.4 Since the distinguishing features of claim 1 do not have any technical effect, they cannot solve any objective technical problem. Therefore, the subject-matter of claim 1 of the main request does not involve any inventive step (Article 56 EPC).

As a result, since non-technical features have to be ignored for assessing non-obviousness, the Board dismissed the appeal due to lack of inventive step.

More information

You can read the whole decision here: T 1743/19 (Possible next actions/CAREFUSION303) of March 4, 2022

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