Identification and modelling of software agents in clinical information system

Usability of Clinical Information Systems (CIS) depends on a consistent match to clinical workflows and the support of its processes. Common CIS based on conventional architectures have to deal with highly communicative and heterogeneous systems. We argue that agents, with their ability to provide intelligent and proactive services within a distributed environment, have a huge potential to support clinical work and therefore improve usability. In the clinical information space, autonomous agents can reflect the work of medical personnel by proactively collecting, integrating and analysing the relevant patient data, and condense and communicate the most relevant information to the responsible decision makers.