Department of Electrical, Computer and Biomedical Engineering, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy.
Research and Development Division, Biomeris S.r.l, Pavia, Italy.
Appl Clin Inform. 2023 Aug;14(4):725-734. doi: 10.1055/a-2113-4443. Epub 2023 Jun 20.
Within the CAPABLE project the authors developed a multi-agent system that relies on a distributed architecture. The system provides cancer patients with coaching advice and supports their clinicians with suitable decisions based on clinical guidelines.
As in many multi-agent systems we needed to coordinate the activities of all agents involved. Moreover, since the agents share a common blackboard where all patients' data are stored, we also needed to implement a mechanism for the prompt notification of each agent upon addition of new information potentially triggering its activation.
The communication needs have been investigated and modeled using the HL7-FHIR (Health Level 7-Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) standard to ensure proper semantic interoperability among agents. Then a syntax rooted in the FHIR search framework has been defined for representing the conditions to be monitored on the system blackboard for activating each agent.
The Case Manager (CM) has been implemented as a dedicated component playing the role of an orchestrator directing the behavior of all agents involved. Agents dynamically inform the CM about the conditions to be monitored on the blackboard, using the syntax we developed. The CM then notifies each agent whenever any condition of interest occurs. The functionalities of the CM and other actors have been validated using simulated scenarios mimicking the ones that will be faced during pilot studies and in production.
The CM proved to be a key facilitator for properly achieving the required behavior of our multi-agent system. The proposed architecture may also be leveraged in many clinical contexts for integrating separate legacy services, turning them into a consistent telemedicine framework and enabling application reusability.
在 CAPABLE 项目中，作者开发了一个依赖分布式架构的多代理系统。该系统为癌症患者提供辅导建议，并根据临床指南为临床医生提供合适的决策支持。
在许多多代理系统中，我们需要协调所有相关代理的活动。此外，由于代理共享一个存储所有患者数据的公共黑板，我们还需要实现一种机制，以便在添加新信息时及时通知每个代理，这些新信息可能会触发其激活。
使用 HL7-FHIR（Health Level 7-Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources）标准调查和建模通信需求，以确保代理之间具有适当的语义互操作性。然后，为了表示要在系统黑板上监控以激活每个代理的条件，定义了一种基于 FHIR 搜索框架的语法。
案例经理（CM）已实现为一个专用组件，扮演着指导所有相关代理行为的协调器角色。代理使用我们开发的语法，动态向 CM 报告要在黑板上监控的条件。然后，CM 在任何感兴趣的条件发生时通知每个代理。使用模拟场景验证了 CM 和其他参与者的功能，这些模拟场景模拟了在试点研究和生产中将要面临的情况。
CM 被证明是正确实现我们多代理系统所需行为的关键促进者。所提出的架构还可以在许多临床环境中用于集成单独的遗留服务，将它们转变为一致的远程医疗框架，并实现应用程序的可重用性。
