Method and System Providing Advice and Services to Consumers

Abstract

The present invention provides a method and system for providing advice and / or services to a consumer including the secure electronic storage of rich private personal data preferably held in trust for and on behalf of a natural person or nominated business or corporate entities. The system provides the applications, processes, controls and data management services to collect from various sources, transfer, store and selectively retrieve data necessary to perform a range of specified planning and decision support activities or events, for which specific applications have been integrated with the secure data store for these purposes. The invention provides for the data owner and authorised persons such as advice and service providers to gain authenticated access to accessible data to undertake permitted tasks. These tasks may include receiving data or record views, or undertaking planning or decision support strategies, or such other tasks as are prescribed. In an embodiment, the system limits access to applications to approved authorised persons and requires specific permissions from the owner in order to manage data privacy standards. The system allows the owner to provide and revoke access permissions to applications and tracks and records all access events.

Description

TECHNICAL FIELD[0001]This invention relates generally to a method and system for providing advice and / or services to consumers and includes the storage and sharing of personal data of a user in a computer system such that the personal data is secure and not easily accessible to others with whom the personal data is not intended to be shared. The invention is suited to various applications where consumers, or trusted entities acting on behalf of consumers, permit efficient access to personal data by others who legitimately require that information or with whom the consumer wishes to share that personal data. In particular, the invention relates to a system and method for consumers to effectively share personal data and in doing so obtain advice based upon the personal data that has been made available to advisers.BACKGROUND ART[0002]Databases for the storage of information have been known for some time. However, databases are not well known for the storage and efficient dissemination...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0035]In a particularly preferred embodiment, the consumer appoints a principal adviser to act on their behalf and authorises that principal adviser to execute various transactions on behalf of the consumer. This enables the consumer to relieve themselves of the burden of managing their affairs and arranging and authorising other advice providers as and when required and considering the advice provided and resolving any difficulties or queries about advice that is deposited into the consumers secure repository.

[0073]The secure repository of items of personal data of consumers may be entrusted to a trusted entity. In a preferred embodiment, the trusted entity may be engaged to create links between personal data items of the consumer in order to enable other users to efficiently access required personal data items of the consumer. In such an embodiment, the linking of items of data enables an advice provider to efficiently perform an analysis of the consumer's relevant data and to provide advice accordingly.

Problems solved by technology

However, databases are not well known for the storage and efficient dissemination of personal information to third parties who are provided permission to access that personal information.

In particular, breaches of privacy with respect to personal information stored in databases operated and maintained by government agencies and others act to undermine the trust of members of the community.

However, these developments have generally only been implemented with respect to entire documents or to provide access to entire databases.

Whilst the best possible advice is desired from a trusted individual and accurate personal data is divulged for this reason, people are generally not inclined to provide unfettered access to an adviser with respect to all their personal data.

The situation is further complicated when a person requires advice from a range of advisers who each require access to different aspects of the individual's personal data.

Therefore, with prior arrangements, there is significant inefficiency experienced by a consumer when they seek advice from a range of advice providers.

This inefficiency is particularly noticeable when a consumer requires advice from multiple advisers who need to collaborate in order to advice the consumer.

Further, with prior arrangements, it is not possible for consumers to retain ownership of their data and obtain advice without providing copies of their personal data to an adviser whilst at the same time satisfying the requirements of advisers to be able to justify or defend the advice provided.

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