Optimization of an agent based clinical data retrieval system

A Virtual Electronic Patient Record (VEPR) has been deployed at Hospital de S. João since 2005 that retrieves and integrates clinical record data. One of its modules is a MultiAgent system for Integration of Data (MAID) that provides automatic report retrieval from departmental systems. The currently deployed MAID uses a static interval for the scheduling of report references retrieval actions. As each department differs in report production rate throughout the day and between weekdays there was a need to optimize and adapt the report reference retrieval scheduling according to each departmental system profile. A Scheduling Agent was developed that, through the past report production and retrieval data, generates a dynamic schedule for the report list retrieval agents. Optimization tests were performed for a specific period of time and a specific department. A set of monitoring data was collected to observe and compare the differences between non-optimized static scheduling and optimized adaptive versions of MAID. The changes introduced by the scheduling agent allow for an optimized report reference retrieval, adjusted to the report production patterns of each department.