We have another case of patent infringement regarding personal health records and without having any additional 
information here I don’t know if there was any attempt made to offer licensing to Aetna, but who knows what reaction they may have received. Offering licensing seems to be the obvious way to initiate and then go to court later if needed. In addition Medicity, a wholly owned subsidiary of Aetna is also cited along with Navinet, which is now owned by BlueCross/Blue Shield. Some back links below from earlier this year and late last year.
Aetna to Acquire Medicity-Health IT Connectivity Vendor-Former CEO Takes Position on Board at Boeing
Blue Cross/Blue Shield Insurers and Highmark Acquire NaviNet Transactional Portal And Medical Records Vendor–Subsidiary Watch
HealthTrio maintains they demonstrated their technologies twice with Aetna and informed them of the patents in place and not long after communications ceased. A few days ago I spoke with Bob Lorsch about a similar patent case but MMRGlobal as far as I know has not filed any lawsuits and is pursuing licensing his patented technologies that go back to 2005 and one EMR vendor, 4Medica has already agreed to the license the royalties. I do remember making a post a while back when HealthVault and Google Health were announced that the CEO of Aetna said they were vaporware.
MMRGlobal Patent Portfolio, Bob Lorsch, CEO Answers Questions Relative to Patented Technologies
Well this could get interesting as I looked at the website and HealthTrio is also an electronic medical records vendor and certified to meet meaningful use criteria so how does their patent compare with those of MMRGlobal as it sounds like with just following the article here that 2007 was the year for HealthTrio patents and MMRGlobal began in 2005? I just glanced quickly through the legal filing as it is several pages long but PHR seems to be most of what is mentioned and the earliest date I saw was 2008, so did the same technology get patented twice or how different are they? Stay tuned…BD
Denver-based HealthTrio, in the suit filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, alleges Aetna has infringed on 10 patents, which cover dozens of functions within a health care information system. Aetna has not seen the suit and cannot yet comment, according to a spokesperson.
One patent alone, covering a method and system for generating personal/individual health records, includes nine steps that a PHR server system performs: enrollment, establishing communication links between the PHR and health plan, receiving payer claims data by the PHR, analyzing encounter data, translating encounter data into a health care concept code, creating the PHR, organizing the PHR by grouping entries, establishing communication links between the PHR and patient, and supplementing the PHR with data from one or more providers.
http://www.healthdatamanagement.com/news/healthtrio-aetna-health-information-exchange-patent-lawsuit-45386-1.html
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