31,130 research outputs found

    A multi-agent system for administering the prescription of anti-retroviral and anti-TB drugs

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    Thesis (M. Tech.) -- Central University of Technology, Free State, 2007Multi-agent systems (MAS) consist of a number of autonomous agents that communicate among themselves to coordinate their activities in order to solve collectively a complex problem that cannot be tackled by any agent individually. These kinds of systems are appropriate in many domains where problems that are complex, distributed and heterogeneous require communication and coordination between separate autonomous agents, which may be running on different machines distributed over the Internet and are located in many different places. In the health care domain, MAS have been used for distributed patient scheduling, organ and tissue transplant management, community care, decision support, training and so on. One other promising area of application is in the prescription of antiretroviral and antiTB drugs. The drugs used to treat the two diseases have many and similar side effects that complicate the prescription process. These factors have to be considered when prescribing medication to a person coinfected with HIV and tuberculosis. This is usually done manually using drug recommendation tables, which are complicated to use and require a great deal of decisionmaking. The design and implementation of a multiagent system that assists health care staff in carrying out the complex task of combining antiretroviral and antiTB drugs in an efficient way is described. The system consists of a number of collaborating agents 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 (doctors, nurses, counsellors, etcetera.) with very different skills and roles. The agents in the system include: patient agents, nurse agents, lab agents, medication agents and physician agents. The agents may be hosted on different machines, located in many different places distributed over the Internet. The system saves time, minimises decision errors and increases the standard of health care provided to patients

    Designing community care systems with AUML

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    This paper describes an approach to developing an appropriate agent environment appropriate for use in community care applications. Key to its success is that software designers collaborate with environment builders to provide the levels of cooperation and support required within an integrated agentā€“oriented community system. Agent-oriented Unified Modeling Language (AUML) is a practical approach to the analysis, design, implementation and management of such an agent-based system, whilst providing the power and expressiveness necessary to support the specification, design and organization of a health care service. The background of an agent-based community care application to support the elderly is described. Our approach to building agentā€“oriented software development solutions emphasizes the importance of AUML as a fundamental initial step in producing more general agentā€“based architectures. This approach aims to present an effective methodology for an agent software development process using a service oriented approach, by addressing the agent decomposition, abstraction, and organization characteristics, whilst reducing its complexity by exploiting AUMLā€™s productivity potential. </p

    An agent-based architecture for managing the provision of community care - the INCA (Intelligent Community Alarm) experience

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    Community Care is an area that requires extensive cooperation between independent agencies, each of which needs to meet its own objectives and targets. None are engaged solely in the delivery of community care, and need to integrate the service with their other responsibilities in a coherent and efficient manner. Agent technology provides the means by which effective cooperation can take place without compromising the essential security of both the client and the agencies involved as the appropriate set of responses can be generated through negotiation between the parties without the need for access to the main information repositories that would be necessary with conventional collaboration models. The autonomous nature of agents also means that a variety of agents can cooperate together with various local capabilities, so long as they conform to the relevant messaging requirements. This allows a variety of agents, with capabilities tailored to the carers to which they are attached to be developed so that cost-effective solutions can be provided. </p

    Coordination approaches and systems - part I : a strategic perspective

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    This is the first part of a two-part paper presenting a fundamental review and summary of research of design coordination and cooperation technologies. The theme of this review is aimed at the research conducted within the decision management aspect of design coordination. The focus is therefore on the strategies involved in making decisions and how these strategies are used to satisfy design requirements. The paper reviews research within collaborative and coordinated design, project and workflow management, and, task and organization models. The research reviewed has attempted to identify fundamental coordination mechanisms from different domains, however it is concluded that domain independent mechanisms need to be augmented with domain specific mechanisms to facilitate coordination. Part II is a review of design coordination from an operational perspective

    Strategies for dynamic appointment making by container terminals

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    We consider a container terminal that has to make appointments with barges dynamically, in real-time, and partly automatic. The challenge for the terminal is to make appointments with only limited knowledge about future arriving barges, and in the view of uncertainty and disturbances, such as uncertain arrival and handling times, as well as cancellations and no-shows. We illustrate this problem using an innovative implementation project which is currently running in the Port of Rotterdam. This project aims to align barge rotations and terminal quay schedules by means of a multi-agent system. In this\ud paper, we take the perspective of a single terminal that will participate in this planning system, and focus on the decision making capabilities of its intelligent agent. We focus on the question how the terminal operator can optimize, on an operational level, the utilization of its quay resources, while making reliable appointments with barges, i.e., with a guaranteed departure time. We explore two approaches: (i) an analytical approach based on the value of having certain intervals within the schedule and (ii) an approach based on sources of exibility that are naturally available to the terminal. We use simulation to get insight in the benefits of these approaches. We conclude that a major increase in utilization degree could be achieved only by deploying the sources of exibility, without harming the waiting time of barges too much
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