Vieira-Marques P.^*, Cruz-Correia R.^*;^**, Costa P.^*, Palhares E.^*, Ferreira A.^*, Costa-Pereira A.^*;^**

pmarques@med.up.pt, rcorreia@med.up.pt, pcosta@med.up.pt, ernesto@med.up.pt, amlaf@med.up.pt, altamiro@med.up.pt

Abstract. Non-existence of a global overview or integration awareness leads to large and generalized heterogeneity of applications and technological approaches. Development of isolated systems has a serious and disruptive impact on daily practice and on clinical economic management. In this paper we describe a multi-agent system for the integration of heterogeneous clinical data sources and present the latest results originating from its use during the last year. The system aims to address several issues concerning the Portuguese healthcare information systems reality where it is common to find the lack of global strategy and planning related to the storage and management of patient’s data. 814.000 reports were integrated from nine departmental applications during 2005. Around 500 doctors use the system per month. Our multi-agent approach has an independent and collaborative profile. It is designed to tackle, in a secure way, problems originating from existing systems heterogeneity and dynamic data production.

Keywords: electronic health record; computer agents; integration and interoperability

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^* Biostatistical and Medical Informatics Department, Faculty of Medicine, University of Porto