Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
main characteristics of distributed healthcare problems, and then, we discuss the ade-
quacy of agent technology in order to tackle them. Then, we present a brief review of
the main fields of healthcare where the agent technology has been applied, summariz-
ing some of the most relevant works.
3.1 Adequacy of Agents Applied in Healthcare Problems
Reviewing the literature [1, 7, 10, 15, 16, 19, 21, 43, 50], some of the most common
problems which should be faced in a medical environment are:
•
It is very usual that the knowledge and data required to solve a medical problem
are spatially distributed in different locations. Also, remote expertise can be re-
quired when dealing with complicate cases. This fact adds several constraints in
the planning of coordinated actions.
•
Treatments and cares are usually given by different providers (physicians,
nurses, carers, social workers, etc.) in different stages of the illness. This re-
quires up-to-date information for all health professionals involved. In addition,
these professionals have different skills, roles and needs, and are located in dif-
ferent places, usually without the supervision of a single coordinator. Those ac-
tors should be able to access to the medical system and interact between them in
a remote fashion.
•
Many health care problems are quite complex in relation to the amount of enti-
ties and variables which should be taken into consideration when implementing
a solution. In consequence, finding standard software engineering solutions for
them is not straightforward. This complexity can be a bottleneck if it is managed
with a centralised system.
•
Data managed in medical informatics has a legal framework that protects them
when exchanging and storing. Data protection and data security mechanisms
should be included in these kinds of systems in order to provide
confidentiality
,
integrity
,
authentication
,
accountability
, and
availability
. In many situations,
these data cannot be electronically transmitted and should be managed in a par-
ticular place.
•
Nowadays, there is a great amount of medical documents, usually called
evidences, which are published from many different medical organizations
(
e.g.,
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (U.S.), Cancer Research UK),
becoming a de facto standard. All these documents should be retrieved and proc-
essed in order to obtain a knowledge that can be shared and reused in new clini-
cal guidelines.
•
Due to the reluctance and preconceptions of individuals involved in healthcare,
the penetration of computerized systems (which may automate or aid some proc-
esses or decision making) is a hard and slow process. In any case, the interaction
between the software and the professionals is crucial in order to supervise
critical healthcare process and decisions which should be performed and taken at
any time.
Considering the described issues and the added values provided by agent technology,
as stated in [39], agent paradigm can be a good option to be used in complex health-
care applications. The main reasons to support this assessment are the following:
Search WWH ::
Custom Search