Application of intelligent agents in health-care: review | Artificial Intelligence Review Skip to main content

Advertisement

Springer Nature Link
Log in

Application of intelligent agents in health-care: review

  • Published:
Artificial Intelligence Review Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The successful use of intelligent agents in healthcare has attracted researchers to apply this emerging software engineering paradigm in more advanced and complex applications. Main success factor is the natural mapping of real world medical problems into cyber world. Multi-agent architecture can easily model the heterogeneous, distributed and autonomous health care systems. The multi agent systems have been applied from single healthcare activity like knowledge based medical system to complex, multi-component based systems like complete healthcare unit. The use of multi agent systems in health care domain has also opened the ways to find out new applications like personalized and socialized health care systems. This versatile use of multi agent systems has also posed new problems for researchers like; security, communication, and different social issues. This work reviews recent years’ research and applications of multi agent systems in healthcare published in different research journals, international conferences, and implemented practically. We reviewed five subdomains and three systems in each subdomain. A set of common parameters of these systems has been extracted and compared to analyze systems’ merits and deficiencies. Based on our analysis, we have provided recommendations for multi agent systems applied in healthcare domain. Future research directions for interested researchers and practitioners are also discussed. As our own future research work, we intend to study healthcare and multi agent systems in e-commerce.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
¥17,985 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Price includes VAT (Japan)

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Explore related subjects

Discover the latest articles, news and stories from top researchers in related subjects.

References

  • Andreadis G et al (2014) Classification and review of multi-agents systems in the manufacturing section. Proc Eng 69:282–290

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Artificial Intelligence in Medicine Society (AIME) (2013) http://www.aimedicine.info/aime13/

  • Azadeh A et al (2014) Scheduling prioritized patients in emergency department laboratories. Comput Methods Programs Biomed 117(2):61–70

  • Beavers G, Hexmoor H (2003) Types and limits of agent autonomy. In: Rovatsos M, Nickles M (eds) Proceedings of the 1st international workshop on computational autonomy—potenial, risks and solutions AAMAS03, Melbourne, Australia, pp 1–9

  • Becker GS (2007) Health as human capital: synthesis and extensions. Oxf Econ Pap 59(3):379–410

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bench-Capon TJM (2014) Knowledge representation: an approach to artificial intelligence. No. 32. Academic Press, London

  • Benomrane S, Ayed M, Alimi AM (2013) An agent-based knowledge discovery from databases applied in healthcare domain. In: 2013 international conference on advanced logistics and transport (ICALT). IEEE

  • Berna-Koes Mary, Nourbakhsh Illah, Sycara Katia (2004) Communication efficiency in multi-agent systems. In: 2004 IEEE international conference on robotics and automation, 2004 proceedings (ICRA’04), vol 3. IEEE

  • Beutter R et al (2014) Privacy setting for medical communications systems. U.S. Patent Application 14/198,826. Focus

  • Bijani S, Robertson D (2014) A review of attacks and security approaches in open multi-agent systems. Artif Intell Rev 42(4):607–636

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bonté B et al (2005) Coupling the farming system modelling tool ‘olympe’with the multi-agentsystem software system ‘cormas’ to understand the use of resources in complex agricultural systems. In: ECMS 2005: 19th European conference on modelling and simulation

  • Borselius N (2002) Security in multi-agent systems. In: Proceedings of the 2002 international conference on security and management (SAM’02)

  • Bourne RA, Excelente-Toledo CB, Jennings NR (2000) Run-time selection of coordination mechanisms in multi-agent systems, pp 348–352

  • Byrski A et al (2015) Evolutionary multi-agent systems. Knowl Eng Rev 30(02):171–186

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cabri G, Puviani M, Zambonelli F (2011) Towards a taxonomy of adaptive agent-based collaboration patterns for autonomic service ensembles. In: 2011 international conference on collaboration technologies and systems (CTS). IEEE

  • Carabelea C, Boissier O, Florea A (2003) Autonomy in MAS: a classication attempt. In: Proc of the workshop on computational autonomy: potential, solutions, risks at AAMAS (Autonomy 2003). Springer, Melbourne, Australia, July 2003, pp103–113

  • Chen TL, Cheng SH, Liu CH, Fang TY, Chen T, Chen C (2010) The study of secure agent-based scheme on health information systems. In: 2010 IEEE international conference on information theory and information security (ICITIS), pp 481–484

  • Chopra AK, Singh MP (2009) An architecture for multiagent systems: An approach based on commitments. In: Proceedings of the AAMAS workshop on programming multiagent systems (ProMAS’09)

  • Chopra AK et al (2013) Research directions in agent communication. ACM Trans Intell Syst Technol (TIST) 4(2):20

    Google Scholar 

  • Ciancarini P, Omicini A, Zambonelli F (1999) Coordination models for multi-agent systems. AgentLink News 3:3–6

    Google Scholar 

  • Corchado JM, Bajo J, Paz Y, Tapia DI (2008) Intelligent environment for monitoring Alzheimer patients, agent technology for health care. Decis Support Syst 44(2):382–396

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cristin G et al. (2015) A framework for cybersecurity information sharing and risk reduction. Microsoft Research

  • Daknou A, Zgaya H, Hammadi S, Hubert H (2010) A dynamic patient scheduling at the emergency department in hospitals. In: 2010 IEEE workshop on health care management (WHCM), pp 1–6

  • Datta A, Dave N, Mitchell J, Nissenbaum H, Sharma D (2010) Privacy challenges in patient-centric health information systems. In: Usenix workshop on health security and privacy

  • Deters R (2001) Scalability & multi-agent systems. In: 2nd international workshop infrastructure for agents, MAS and Scalable MAS. 5th international conference on autonomous agents

  • Domingos P (2007) Structured machine learning: ten problems for the next ten years. In: Proceedings of the annual international conference on inductive logic programming

  • Excelente-Toledo CB, Jennings NR (2004) The dynamic selection of coordination mechanisms. Auton Agent Multi Agent Syst 9(1–2):55–85

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Falagas ME et al (2008) Comparison of PubMed, Scopus, web of science, and Google scholar: strengths and weaknesses. FASEB J 22(2):338–342

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Far BH, Wanyama T (2003) Metrics for agent-based software development. In: Canadian conference on electrical and computer engineering, 2003. IEEE CCECE 2003, vol 2. IEEE

  • FIPA Specifications (2007) Specifying protocols for multi-agent systems interaction. ACM Trans Auton Adapt Syst 2(4). doi:10.1145/1293731.1293735

  • Fulbright R, Stephens LM (1994) Classification of multiagent systems. In: Proceedings of the 2nd international working conference on cooperative knowledge based systems (CKBS-94). Keele University, Dake Centre

  • Gardner HH, Gardner DB (2012) Health as human capital —theory and its implications. Internally published research white paper. www.HCMSGroup.com

  • Gmytrasiewicz PJ, Durfee EH (2001) Rational communication in multi-agent environments. Auton Agent Multi Agent Syst 4(3):233–272

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Greenberg MS, Byington JC, Harper DG (1998) Mobile agents and security. IEEE Commun Mag 36(7):76–85

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gupta Si, Pujari S (2009) A multi-agent system (MAS) based scheme for health care and medical diagnosis system. In: International conference on intelligent agent and multi-agent systems, 2009. IAMA 2009. IEEE

  • Hagalisletto AM, Steinar K (2010) Pervasive integration by autonomous agents. In: 2010 43rd Hawaii international conference on system sciences (HICSS), pp 1–9

  • http://k4care.net/index.php?id=160&tx_drwiki_pi1%5Bkeyword%5D=SDA%2A%20Model

  • http://cintesis.med.up.pt/index.php/projects/9-projects/69-sahib-enhancing-multi-institutional-health-data-availability-through-multi-agent-systems

  • http://www.dfki.de/ga/completed_mas.html

  • http://www.jade.tilab.com/

  • http://www.omg.org/

  • http://www.fipa.org/index.html

  • https://scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/about.html

  • Huang Q, Yang X, Li S (2011) Identity authentication and context privacy preservation in wireless health monitoring system. Int J Comput Netw Inf Secur 3(4):53

    MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Hudson DL, Cohen ME (2010) Intelligent agents in home healthcare. Annals of telecommunications - annales des télécommunications 65(9):593–600

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Isern D, Moreno A, Sánchez D, Hajnal Á, Pedone G, Varga LZ (2011) Agent-based execution of personalised home care treatments. Appl Intell 34(2):155–180

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Isern D, Sanchez D, Moreno A (2010) Agents applied in health care: a review. Int J Med Inform 79:145–166

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ivanović M, Budimac Z (2012) Software agents: state-of-the-art and possible applications. In: Proceedings of the 13th international conference on computer systems and technologies (CompSysTech ’12). ACM, New York, USA, pp 11–22

  • Ji M, Muhammad A, Egerstedt M (2006) Leader-based multi-agent coordination: controllability and optimal control. In: American control conference, 2006. IEEE

  • Ji Y, Shen F, Tran J (2012) A high performance agent-based system for reporting suspected adverse drug reactions. In: 2012 ninth international conference on information technology: new generations (ITNG), pp 490–495

  • Johnston J, Leung G, Wong J, Ho L, Fielding R (2001) Physicians’ attitudes towards the computerization of clinical practice in Hong Kong: a population study. Int J Med Inform 65:41–49

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jorge ICA (2011) Agent-based methodology for developing agroecosystems’ simulations. In: Software engineering and formal methods: 9th international conference (SEFM 2011), pp 431–445

  • Jung Y et al (2012) A survey of security issue in multi-agent systems. Artif Intell Rev 37(3):239–260

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kalia AK, Singh MP (2014) Muon: designing multiagent communication protocols from interaction scenarios. Auton Agent Multi Agent Syst 29(4):621–657

  • Kaluža B, Mirchevska V, Dovgan E, Luštrek M, Gams M (2010) An agent-based approach to care in independent living. In: Proceedings of the First international joint conference on ambient intelligence (Am I’10). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 177–186

  • Kaplan HC et al (2012) The Model for Understanding Success in Quality (MUSIQ): building a theory of context in healthcare quality improvement. BMJ Qual Saf 21(1):13–20

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kim H (2014) Enhanced identity authentication and context privacy preservation in ubiquitous healthcare system. Int J Control Autom 7(11):391–400

  • Kim J, Chung K-Y (2014) Ontology-based healthcare context information model to implement ubiquitous environment. Multimed Tools Appl 71(2):873–888

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kirn S, Anhalt C, Krcmar H, Schweiger A (2006) Agent. Hospital—health care applications of intelligent agents, book chapter, pubished under subtitle “theory and applications in enterprises”, Book Title “multiagent engineering”, pp 199–220. ISBN:978-3-540-31406-6

  • La P, Mariantonietta FM, Sgandurra D (2013) A survey on security for mobile devices. IEEE Commun Surv Tutor 15(1):446–471

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Langevin S (2010) Knowledge representation, communication, and update in probability-based multiagent systems. In: Proceedings of the 9th international conference on autonomous agents and multiagent systems: volume 1. International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, pp 1663–1664

  • Lee P, Khong P, Ghista D (2006) Impact of deficient healthcare service quality. TQM Mag 18(6):563–571

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lin CJ, Jhao YL, Cheng S, Yeh W (2012) The intelligent agents in the study of web-based medical information search system. In: 2012 international conference on machine learning and cybernetics (ICMLC), vol 5, pp 1801–1806

  • Luck M, d’Inverno M (1995) A formal framework for agency and autonomy. In: ICMAS 95

  • Luck M, McBurney P, Shehory O, Willmott S (2005) Agent technology: computing as interaction (a roadmap for agent based computing), AgentLink III. http://www.agentlink.org/roadmap/al3rm.pdf

  • Lyell M, Liu X (2012) Software agent application to support the patient-at-home. In: 2012 international conference on collaboration technologies and systems (CTS), pp 97–103

  • Manate B et al (2014) An intelligent context-aware decision-support system oriented towards healthcare support. In: 2014 eighth international conference on complex, intelligent and software intensive systems (CISIS). IEEE

  • Marzougui B, Kamel B (2013) Interaction protocols in multi-agent systems based on agent petri nets model. Int J Adv Comput Sci Appl 4:7

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McArthur S, Davidson E, Catterson V, Dimeas A, Hatziargyriou N, Ponci F, Funabashi T (2007) Multi-agent systems for power engineering applications-part ii: Technologies, standards, and tools for building multi-agent systems. IEEE Transactions on power systems

  • Miyagawa S et al (2014) Framework for information sharing with privacy and priority control in long-term care in Japan. Int J e-Health Med Commun 5(1):46–62

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Mohammed MF, Lim CP, Quteishat A (2014) A novel trust measurement method based on certified belief in strength for a multi-agent classifier system. Neural Comput Appl 24(2):421–429

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Moreno A (2006) Guest Editor’s introduction: on the evolution of applying agent technology to healthcare. IEEE Intell Syst 21(6):8–10

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nealon, JL, Moreno A (eds) (2003) Applications of software agent technology in the health care domain, whitestein series in software agent technologies and autonomic computing. Birkhäuser, Basel

  • Niazi M, Hussain A (2011) Agent-based computing from multi-agent systems to agent-based models: a visual survey. Scientometrics 89(2):479–499

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nowostawski M, Purvis M (2007) The concept of autonomy in distributed computation and multi-agent systems. In: Proceedings of the 2007 IEEE/WIC/ACM international conference on intelligent agent technology. IEEE Computer Society

  • Nwana HS (1996) Software agents: an overview. Knowl Eng Rev 11(3):205–244

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Olfati-Saber R, Fax JA, Murray RM (2007) Consensus and cooperation in networked multi-agent systems. Proc IEEE 95(1):215–233

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Page CL, Bousquet F, Bakam I, Bah A, Baron C (2000) CORMAS: a multiagent simulation toolkit to model natural and social dynamics at multiple scales. In: Proceedings of Workshop “The ecology of scales”, Wageningen, The Netherlands

  • Patriarca-Almeida JH, Vieira-Marques PM, Cruz-Correia RJ (2011) Simulation environment for the optimization of the data retrieval capabilities of an agent based system in a healthcare setting. In: 5th international conference on industrial applications of holonic and multi-agent systems for manufacturing (HoloMAS’11), pp 124–132

  • Patriarca-Almeida JH, Vieira-Marques PM, Cruz-Correia RJ (2012) Optimization of an agent based clinical data retrieval system. In: 2012 7th Iberian conference on information systems and technologies (CISTI), pp 1–6

  • Pegueroles J, de la Cruz LJ, Vera-del-Campo J, Hernandez-Serrano J, Leon O (2013) The TAMESIS project: enabling technologies for the health status monitoring and secure exchange of clinical record. In: 2013 seventh international conference on complex, intelligent, and software intensive systems (CISIS), pp 312–319

  • Pinyol I, Sabater-Mir J (2013) Computational trust and reputation models for open multi-agent systems: a review. Artif Intell Rev 40(1):1–25

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rahmat MH, Annamalai M, Halim SA, Ahmad R (2013) Agent-based modelling and simulation of emergency department re-triage. In: 2013 IEEE business engineering and industrial applications colloquium (BEIAC), pp 219–224

  • Sánchez-Garzón I, Fdez-Olivares J, Onaindía E, Milla G, Jordán J, Castejón P (2013) A multi-agent planning approach for the generation of personalized treatment plans of comorbid patients. In: Artificial intelligence in medicine, vol. 7885. Springer, Berlin, pp 23–27

  • Sarkar A, Debnath NC (2012) Measuring complexity of multi-agent system architecture. In: 2012 10th IEEE international conference on industrial informatics (INDIN). IEEE

  • Self AL, DeLoach SA (2003) Designing and specifying mobility within the multiagent systems engineering methodology. In: Proceedings of the 2003 ACM symposium on applied computing. ACM

  • Shirabad JS, Wilk S, Michalowski W, Farion K (2012) Implementing an integrative multi-agent clinical decision support system with open source software. J Med Syst 36(1):123–137

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stone P, Veloso M (2000) Multiagent systems: a survey from a machine learning perspective. Auton Robots 8(3):345–383

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Su C-J, Wu C-Y (2011) JADE implemented mobile multi-agent based, distributed information platform for pervasive health care monitoring. Appl Soft Comput 11(1):315–325

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Subalakshmi RJ, Das A, Iyengar NCSN (2010) A Small e-health care information system with agent technology. In: 2011 International conference on computational intelligence and communication networks (CICN), pp 68–72

  • Such JM, Espinosa A, Garcia-Fornes A (2014) A survey of privacy in multi-agent systems. Knowl Eng Rev 29(03):314–344

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Taweel A, Mahmoud S, Tawil AR (2014) Privacy-aware agent-oriented architecture for distributed ehealth systems. In: On the move to meaningful internet systems: OTM 2014 workshops. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Vlassis N (2007) A concise introduction to multiagent systems and distributed artificial intelligence. Synthesis lectures on artificial intelligence and machine learning. Morgan & Claypool Publisher, San Rafael, pp 1–71

  • Witkowski M, Stathis K (2004) A dialectic architecture for computational autonomy. In: Agents and computational autonomy, vol. 2969. Springer, Heidelberg, pp 261–273

  • Wong TC, Xu M, Chin KS (2014) A two-stage heuristic approach for nurse scheduling problem: a case study in an emergency department. Comput Oper Res 51:99–110

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Wooldridge M, Jennings NR, Kinny D (2000) The Gaia methodology for agent-oriented analysis and design. Auton Agent Multi Agent Syst 3:285–312

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Xiao J, Osterweil LJ, Wang Q (2010) Dynamic scheduling of emergency department resources. In: Veinot T (ed) Proceedings of the 1st ACM international health informatics symposium (IHI ’10). ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp 590–599

  • Xu Y et al (2006) Towards flexible coordination of large scale multi-agent teams. In: Coordination of large-scale multiagent systems. Springer, New York, pp 287–309

  • Xuan P, Lesser V, Zilberstein S (2001) Communication decisions in multi-agent cooperation: model and experiments. In: Proceedings of the fifth international conference on autonomous agents. ACM

  • Yu H et al (2013) A survey of multi-agent trust management systems. IEEE Access 1:35–50

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zambonelli F, Luck M (2004) Agent hell: a scenario of worst practices. Computer 37(3):96–98

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zheng S, Li W, Peng X, Zhao H, Zhang C (2010) Research on integrating the healthcare enterprise based on multi-agent. In: 2010 International conference on computer, mechatronics, control and electronic engineering (CMCE), pp 493–496

  • Zhong Y (2009) Mechanism approach to advanced intelligence. Int J Adv Intell 1(1):27–38

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore, Pakistan

    Sajid Iqbal, Muhammad Aslam & Muhammad Usman Ghani Khan

  2. Department of Computer Science, University of Gujrat, Gujrat, Pakistan

    Wasif Altaf

  3. Al-Khwarizmi Institute of Computer Science, University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore, Pakistan

    Waqar Mahmood

  4. Department of Computer Science, Bahauddin Zakariya University (Sahiwal Sub-Campus), Multan, Pakistan

    Sajid Iqbal

Authors
  1. Sajid Iqbal
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Wasif Altaf
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Muhammad Aslam
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Waqar Mahmood
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Muhammad Usman Ghani Khan
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sajid Iqbal.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Iqbal, S., Altaf, W., Aslam, M. et al. Application of intelligent agents in health-care: review. Artif Intell Rev 46, 83–112 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10462-016-9457-y

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10462-016-9457-y

Keywords

Search

Navigation