Applications of Software Agent Technology in the Health Care Domain (Whitestein Series in Software Agent Technologies and Autonomic Computing)

Agent Cities [4] is an ambitious project whose main aim is the construction of a worldwide, publicly accessible network of agent-based FIPA platforms!. In March 2003 there are around 50 active platforms. Each of them supports agents that offer services similar to those that can be found in a real city (facilities, amenities, attractions, information and commercial services). It is expected that, in the near future, it will be possible to implement intelligent complex compound services (e.g. agents that are able to help a user to plan a weekend away, including tasks such as booking air tickets, selecting and booking a room in an appropriate hotel, buying tickets for the theatre and reserving a table in a restaurant that is near the theatre and offers the user's favourite meal). The main aim of our work was to develop a set of agents that could offer to the citizens and visitors of a city not the usual leisure-oriented services but health-care related services. This interest is related with previous work that our research group had done in the last years in the application of AI techniques (especially agent-based technology) to the medical domain (see e.g. [6]). Therefore, we decided to design and implement a multi-agent system with the following features: • The user may request information about all the medical centres available in a particular geographical area. Front Matter....Pages i-v Introduction: Agents in Health Care....Pages 1-2 Agent-Based Applications in Health Care....Pages 3-18 Building an Agent-Based Community Care Demonstrator on a Worldwide Agent Platform....Pages 19-34 Agent-Based User Interface Adaptivity in a Medical Decision Support System....Pages 35-47 GruSMA1: Experience on the Deployment of Agent-Based Health Care Services....Pages 49-65 Agent.Hospital — a Framework for Clinical Applications in Agentcities....Pages 67-85 OntHoS — an Ontology for Hospital Scenarios....Pages 87-103 Agent-Based Up-to-date Data Management in National electronic Library for Communicable Disease....Pages 105-124 Wound Care Documentation in Municipal Elderly Care....Pages 125-141 An Agent-Based Intelligent Tutoring System for Nurse Education....Pages 143-159 Carrel : Secure Deployment of an Agent—Based Health Care Application....Pages 161-179 Assisting the Spanish Organ Transplant Coordination Process with Multi-Agent Systems....Pages 181-197 A Multi-Agent System for Organ Transplant Management....Pages 199-212

This volume contains a collection of papers that provides a unique, novel and up-to-date overview of how software agents technology is being applied in very diverse problems in health care, ranging from community care to management of organ transplants. It also provides an introductory survey that highlights the main issues to be taken into account when deploying agents in the health care area.

The intended audience includes graduate and postgraduate students specializing in artificial intelligence and researchers interested in the application of new technologies.

This volume contains a collection of papers that provides a unique, novel and up-to-date overview of how software agents technology is being applied in very diverse problems in health care, ranging from community care to management of organ transplants. It also provides an introductory survey that highlights the main issues to be taken into account when deploying agents in the health care area. The intended audience includes graduate and postgraduate students specializing in artificial intelligence and researchers interested in the application of new technologies. Health care at all levels - local, regional, national and international - is a vast open environment characterized by shared and distributed decision making and management of care, requiring the communication of complex and diverse forms of information between a variety of clinical and other settings, as well as the coordination between groups of health care professionals with very different skills and roles. "The intended audience includes graduate and postgraduate students specializing in artificial intelligence and researchers interested in the application of new technologies."--BOOK JACKET