R-CAST-MED: Applying intelligent agents to support emergency medical decision-making teams

Shizhuo Zhu, Joanna Abraham, Sharoda A. Paul, Madhu Reddy, John Yen, Mark Pfaff, Christopher DeFlitch

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

15 Scopus citations

Abstract

Decision-making is a crucial aspect of emergency response during mass casualty incidents (MCIs). MCIs require rapid decisions to be taken by geographically-dispersed teams in an environment characterized by insufficient information, ineffective collaboration and inadequate resources. Despite the increasing adoption of decision support systems in healthcare, there is limited evidence of their value in large-scale disasters. We conducted focus groups with emergency medical services and emergency department personnel who revealed that one of the main challenges in emergency response during MCIs is information management. Therefore, to alleviate the issues arising from ineffective information management, we propose R-CAST-MED, an intelligent agent architecture built on Recognition-Primed Decision-making (RPD) and Shared Mental Models (SMMs). A simulation of R-CAST-MED showed that this tool enabled efficient information management by identifying relevant information, inferring missing information and sharing information with other agents, which led to effective collaboration and coordination of tasks across teams.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationArtificial Intelligence in Medicine - 11th Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, AIME 2007, Proceedings
Pages24-33
Number of pages10
StatePublished - 2007
Event11th Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, AIME 2007 - Amsterdam, Netherlands
Duration: Jul 7 2007Jul 11 2007

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume4594 LNAI
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference11th Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, AIME 2007
Country/TerritoryNetherlands
CityAmsterdam
Period07/7/0707/11/07

Keywords

  • Decision support systems
  • Information management
  • Intelligent agent
  • Mass casualty incidents
  • Simulation

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