Decentralised Clinical Guidelines Modelling with Lightweight Coordination Calculus

Background: Clinical protocols and guidelines have been considered as a major means to ensure that cost-effective services are provided at the point of care. Recently, the computerisation of clinical guidelines has attracted extensive research interest. Many languages and frameworks have been developed. Thus far, however,an enactment mechanism to facilitate decentralised guideline execution has been a largely neglected line of research. It is our contention that decentralisation is essential to maintain a high-performance system in pervasive health care scenarios. In this paper, we propose the use of Lightweight Coordination Calculus (LCC) as a feasible solution. LCC is a light-weight and executable process calculus that has been used successfully in multi-agent systems, peer-to-peer (p2p) computer networks, etc. In light of an envisaged pervasive health care scenario, LCC, which represents clinical protocols and guidelines as message-based interaction models, allows information exchange among software agents distributed across different departments and/or hospitals. Results: We outlined the syntax and semantics of LCC; proposed a list of refined criteria against which the appropriateness of candidate clinical guideline modelling languages are evaluated; and presented two LCC interaction models of real life clinical guidelines. Conclusions: We demonstrated that LCC is particularly useful in modelling clinical guidelines. It specifies the exact partition of a workflow of events or tasks that should be observed by multiple "players" as well as the interactions among these "players". LCC presents the strength of both process calculi and Horn clauses pair of which can provide a close resemblance of logic programming and the flexibility of practical implementation

Flexible Multi-Agent Protocols

In this paper we de ne a novel technique for the speci cation of agent protocols in Multi-Agent-Systems. This technique addresses a number of shortcomings of previous Electronic Institution based speci cations. In particular, we relax the static speci cation of agent protocols as statebased diagrams and allow protocols to be de ned and disseminated in a exible manner during agent interaction. Our exible speci cation is derived from process algebra and thus forms a sound basis for the veri cation of such systems

A Case-Based Reasoning Framework for Enterprise Model Building, Sharing and Reusing

Submitted to ECAI'2000 June, Berlin.Enterprise model development is essentially a labour-intensive exercise. Human experts depend heavily on prior experience when they are building new models making it a natural domain to apply Case Based Reasoning techniques. Through the provision of model building knowledge, automatic testing and design guidance can be provided by rule-based facilities. Exploring these opportunities requires us not only to determine which forms of knowledge are generic and therefore re-usable, but also how this knowledge can be used to provide useful model building support. This paper presents our experiences in identifying and classifying the knowledge which exists in IBM's BSDM Business Models and applying AI techniques, CBR and Rule-Based reasoning together with a symbolic simulator, to provide more complete support throughout the enterprise model development life cycle

OpenKnowledge for peer-to-peer experimentation in protein identification by MS/MS

Background: Traditional scientific workflow platforms usually run individual experiments with little evaluation and analysis of performance as required by automated experimentation in which scientists are being allowed to access numerous applicable workflows rather than being committed to a single one. Experimental protocols and data under a peer-to-peer environment could potentially be shared freely without any single point of authority to dictate how experiments should be run. In such environment it is necessary to have mechanisms by which each individual scientist (peer) can assess, locally, how he or she wants to be involved with others in experiments. This study aims to implement and demonstrate simple peer ranking under the OpenKnowledge peer-to-peer infrastructure by both simulated and real-world bioinformatics experiments involving multi-agent interactions. Methods: A simulated experiment environment with a peer ranking capability was specified by the Lightweight Coordination Calculus (LCC) and automatically executed under the OpenKnowledge infrastructure. The peers such as MS/MS protein identification services (including web-enabled and independent programs) were made accessible as OpenKnowledge Components (OKCs) for automated execution as peers in the experiments. The performance of the peers in these automated experiments was monitored and evaluated by simple peer ranking algorithms. Results: Peer ranking experiments with simulated peers exhibited characteristic behaviours, e.g., power law effec

The Maine Annex, vol. 2, no. 2

Maine Annex editor Roy W. Nickerson faced flack after disrupting a talk about American-Russian relations by Russian revolutionary, leader of the social-democratic Trudovik faction of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, and president of the short-lived provinsional government following the overthrow of the Czar, Dr. Alexander Kerensky. Kerensky was ousted by the Bolshevisks lead by Vladamir Lenin

The Maine Annex, vol. 2, no. 4

This issue of The Maine Annex covers a variety of campus events and organizations and features numerous essays and opinion pieces. Experiencing the highest enrollment among Veterans, the paper announces that the VA stipend for living costs, books, supplies, and equipment would no longer cover the cost of materials deemed by the university administration to be non-essential to the completion of specific courses of studies