Healthcare applications based on software agents

Healthcare has been recognised as one of the most important areas for enterprise applications and services. Presently, information technologists and systems engineers all over the world are working towards achieving better efficiency and quality of service in various sectors of healthcare, such as telemedicine, hospital management, patient-care, and treatment. This paper addresses the issue of more effective and efficient handling of doctor-patient relationship. The idea is to use Software Agent technology to extend the patient-doctor relationship beyond the physical and logistical limitation of face-to-face consultations in patient management. Software agents can provide an extension of the doctor by interacting with the patient via a computer and the Internet. The agent is visualised as an anthropomorphic figure to further enhance the patient interaction.