An intelligent agent approach to improving the coordination efficiency in the donor kidney distribution process

Kidney transplantation is an effective treatment for an end-stage renal disease. Donor kidneys need to be matched with appropriate patients, distributed and transplanted very quickly (less than 40 hr) in order to achieve optimal medical results. In this paper we analyse the bottlenecks in the current donor kidney distribution process and investigate how agent technology can be applied to improve this process. We propose a distributed multi-agent system operating in a mobile communication environment to assist transplant coordinators in coordinating with multiparties in this time-critical distribution process. A prototype system has been developed to demonstrate the feasibility of such a system.