AN AGENT BASED INFRASTRUCURE FOR FACILITATING EVIDENCE BASED MEDICINE

摘要

Evidence-based medicine relies heavily on the timely dissemination of 'best evidence' to a wide audience of health practitioners (Atkins and Louw, 2000). However, finding, assimilating and using this information resource effectively can be difficult. In this paper we describe an infrastructure for facilitating evidence-based health care using Agora - a multi-agent system. This paper discusses a new application for AGORA, and also describes issues for disseminating such medical knowledge via an adaptive, intelligent, distributed, mobile information service. We describe how an agent based approach can deliver clinical cases and diagnosis information to clinicians at point of care tailored to her/his needs. This research in progress is particularly important for the facilitating flow of information in health care.