Supporting an Interdisciplinary Healthcare Team with a Multi-Agent System

Background

The issue of collaboration among multiple decision-makers has been the subject of research in fields such as computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) (Weerakkody & Ray, 2003), where it has produced a blueprint for designing collaborative systems for improving team performance (Fitzpatrick & Ellingsen, 2012). Considering that patient management processes are complex, this blueprint has also been applied in healthcare (Fitzpatrick & Ellingsen, 2012). However, most of the healthcare workflow management systems have primarily been concerned with representing workflows or with scheduling activities from a workflow, with less emphasis on coordinated care delivery by an IHT. This is well illustrated with the HealthFlow system (Huser, Rasmussen, Oberg, & Starren, 2011) that offers a set of user-friendly tools for creating and maintaining workflows while providing no direct support for IHT collaboration and coordination. Another example is the HeCaSe2 system (Isern & Moreno, 2010) that was designed to align activities and services across a number of healthcare organizations.