Title: Quality of service in healthcare units

Authors: Jose Machado, Antonio Abelha, Paulo Novais, Jose Neves, Joao Neves

Addresses: Department of Informatics, University of Minho, Campus de Gualtar, 4710-059 Braga, Portugal. ' Department of Informatics, University of Minho, Campus de Gualtar, 4710-059 Braga, Portugal. ' Department of Informatics, University of Minho, Campus de Gualtar, 4710-059 Braga, Portugal. ' Department of Informatics, University of Minho, Campus de Gualtar, 4710-059 Braga, Portugal. ' Centro Hospitalar de Vila Nova de Gaia e Espinho, Rua Conceicao Fernandes Vilar de Andorinho, 4430-502 Vila Nova de Gaia, Portugal

Abstract: Healthcare systems have to be understood in terms of a wide variety of heterogeneous, distributed and ubiquitous systems, speaking different languages, integrating medical equipment and being customised by different entities, which in turn were set by people living in different contexts and aiming at different goals. Therefore, architecture has been envisaged to support the medical applications in terms of an agency for integration, diffusion and archiving of medical information and the electronic medical record, a form of a web spider of intelligent information processing system, its major subsystems, their functional roles and the flow of information and control among them, with adjustable autonomy. With such web-based simulated systems, quality of service will be improved (e.g., the available knowledge may be used for educational and training purposes).

Keywords: medical informatics; agent-oriented programming; AOP; virtual healthcare facilities; VHFs; e-health; electronic healthcare; electronic medical records; intelligent information; quality of service; QoS; information integration.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCAET.2010.035396

International Journal of Computer Aided Engineering and Technology, 2010 Vol.2 No.4, pp.436 - 449

Published online: 30 Sep 2010 *

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