Palo Alto Inventors Receive Patent on Mobile Health Care Applications

Palo Alto, CA, March 15, 2005 -- Cellefony Inc., a provider of innovative software applications for mobile devices announced that the company’s founders Raman K. Rao and Sunil K. Rao et al. have been granted a US Patent related to providing nutritional and other types of gastronomic information and instructions over mobile devices such as cellular telephones and personal digital assistants for a range of applications such as dining, grocery shopping and personal health management.

The patent number US 6,865,261 granted on March 8, 2005 to Rao et al. is titled, “Method for providing gastronomic information and instruction with an Internet server using mobile communications or computing devices and intelligent appliances.”

“The patent has a broad application and current relevance for enabling individuals to proactively and in real time manage their own personal health using a ubiquitous appliance such as cellular telephones and other types of mobile and stationary devices. We expect mobile devices to play a leading role in the future, enabling individuals to track the ingestion of food and other health factors in real time in conjunction with accessing personal databases contained within their mobile/stationary devices and databases of restaurants and grocery establishments,” said Raman K. Rao, Chairman and CEO of Cellefony.

The unique features and claims include the ability to establish a customer profile with a food service establishment comprising a photo and other pertinent information for a personalized dining experience that includes friendly greeting, making reservations, obtaining preferred seating, accessing the food services establishment’s databases for nutritional and other information, tracking the types of food consumed and the frequency of consumption of various foods using a stationary or mobile device. Other novel features include the ability to select, place and monitor an order via a stationary device located at the table or via a mobile device such as cellular telephone and PDA.

“Additional novel features are the ability to establish attendee lists such as for meetings at a restaurant, appending memos to a dining transaction, means for communicating the information to various personal and business databases for expense reports and other purposes, and payment for transactions via the mobile device. The features further enable the individual to search and access the menu items, recipes, ingredients, nutritional and caloric information from various databases including that of the vendor for the purpose of tracking, monitoring, managing and obtaining a comprehensive running history of the food ingestion and other factors such as physical exercise related to the individual,” said Sunil K. Rao, President and CTO of Cellefony.

“The selection of the food service establishment based on location and other personal preference factors is enabled while on the move in conjunction with a mobile device and the customer profile. Additionally, there is a need for error-free selection by providing translation of textual menus to audible menus in one or more languages and further enabling images, audio and video related to various food items and ingredients. Our patent covers these aspects that are critical to the local and international traveler,” added Sunil Rao.

The claims include the ability to search for recipes using a mobile device, screening recipes against pre-set rules, determining the quantities of ingredients needed, accessing personal databases and the databases of the grocer, ordering various items from the selected grocer, and obtaining a real time summary and analysis of the usage of various recipes, ingredients, nutritional and caloric values for use by the individual or his/her trusted designees such as health care professionals for the purpose of total, real time and proactive personal health management.

“In the US, approximately half of the family’s food budget is spent on eating out at sit down and fast food restaurants and the other half is spent eating in at home. There is a need for everyone to take personal responsibility for proactively managing their own health based on reliable nutritional information provided by vendors and other sources, their own food consumption choices and other activities such as physical exercise. Our invention and software applications enable the individual to track, monitor and manage their own food consumption and other activities in real time,” said Raman K. Rao, Chairman and CEO of Cellefony. The company is currently beta testing its software applications for mobile devices with selected restaurant customers and has applications in development for the grocery market and other health care providers.

The invention also addresses food preparation, food storage procedures, and management of food inventory with wired and wireless intelligent appliances. The management, communication and control of intelligent appliances by a mobile device for gastronomic information and instruction tasks are included in the Rao invention.

Cellefony is a privately-held California Corporation.

Contact Information

Raman K. Rao

Press Contact

Cellefony Inc.

Contact via E-mail