Agent-based careflow for patient-centred palliative care

Abstract

In this paper, we propose the use of an agent-based architecture to enhance workflow system capacity to support interprofessional, patient-centred palliative care delivery. This paper outlines the concept of palliative care and describes how agents can be used to assist care providers to address the needs of the patient and family. Agents are described in terms of the services they provide, and the dependencies among them (which determine the information flow, facilitating the communication and collaboration among the patient and care providers). We present how this architecture integrates with a healthcare workflow system and discuss the issues of work assignment, scheduling and monitoring. © 2011 ICST Institute for Computer Science, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering.