Agent Orient Software & Smart Internet Technology CRC Team Up to Improve Communication & Healthcare Delivery In Public Hospitals

Sydney - 15 September 2003 - Smart Internet Technology CRC (Smart Internet) announced today that Agent Oriented Software Pty Ltd (AOS) has signed up as a Research Affiliate contributing $100k in resources, including access to their flagship product, JACK Intelligent Agents™, to further research into the use of information technology within the hospital environment.

Healthcare is an outstanding example of a real-world setting in which individuals have both personal as well as team-based responsibilities. Current research builds a picture of an overstressed communications infrastructure, with the potential to cause clinical errors, and reduce the quality and efficiency of work. A recent study by Enrico Coiera, Professor Medical Informatics, UNSW has shown that about 80% of clinical time is spent in conversation with colleagues, and as a result health workers have about 11 interruptions an hour. The cognitive loads imposed by such communications are believed to have negative effects on working memory.

Through the use of a mobile multimedia communications device and multi-agent technology, each health worker would have a personal agent (a smart digital assistant) which acts as their communication proxy, intelligently handling communication traffic such as voice, SMS, and email, much as a secretary might do, and attempting to reduce call traffic according to validated personal policies. Each team would also have an agent that represents the team’s needs with a model of the team’s tasks, roles and responsibilities.

Applications that will be considered include team co-ordination services which allow execution of shared tasks by mobile workers, use of additional networked devices, such as whiteboards and monitors to build dynamic collaborative spaces that form wherever team members are assembled, and complex message switching services that use notions like team roles to ensure that even if an individual team member is unavailable, messages are received by another member who is qualified in that role.

Prof. Darrell Williamson, CEO, Smart Internet Technology CRC said. “This research partnership with AOS will enable us to support the R&D capability of a growing Australian company exporting to the UK and the US.”

“R&D into the use of multi-agent technology enables us to use IT to focus on the sharp end of delivering healthcare outcomes rather than the blunt end (backend) billing systems where most of the focus has been to date.” said Darrell.

Nick Howden, Business Application Manager at AOS comments. “By providing Smart Internet access to the JACK Intelligent Agents™ and JACK Teams platforms, we have given the CRC a sound software basis on which to build the hospital demonstrator. Through this collaboration, the research outcomes will feed back into our core product and will advance the leading edge in intelligent agent applications.”

“Teamed-agents provide the next generation in intelligent agent software, helping to deliver complex collaborative and distributed applications. Applications involving work-flow and co-ordination challenges such as in healthcare, emergency services and manufacturing can benefit from faster development and deliver greater outcomes through the use of teamed intelligent agents” said Nick.

Professor Enrico Coiera, the Foundation Chair in Medical Informatics within the Faculty of Medicine at the University of NSW, Wayne Wobcke, Associate Professor School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of NSW, who has extensive experience relevant to agent architectures and dialogue modelling, in both universities and industry, and Claude Sammut, a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of New South Wales and Head of the Artificial Intelligence Research Group, will lead the team of researchers looking at the use of multi-agent technology in a hospital environment.

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About Agent Oriented Software

Agent Oriented Software Pty. Ltd. (AOS) is an Australian owned technology product company, which eschewed the dot com approach even when it was fashionable. AOS was founded by an established team of world-class engineering and software professionals, to develop and market an intelligent agent framework, JACK Intelligent Agents™. The corporate business model is to partner with organisations with a need to incorporate intelligent agent capabilities into their products or systems. AOS offers a wide variety of commercial licensing/joint venture options to suit the requirements of various partner organisations. AOS’ customers and partners include:

• Australian Dept. of Defence and the Defence Science & Technology Organisation (DSTO)
• UK Ministry of Defence and Defence Science Technology Laboratory (Dstl)
• Toshiba (Japan)
• Dassault Aviation (France)
• Canadian Defence and DRDC
• QinetiQ (UK)
• Cambridge University (UK)
• PennState University (USA)
• The University of Melbourne
• RMIT University
• University of New South Wales and Smart Internet CRC

JACK Intelligent Agents™ was first released in October 1998, and is the subject of continuous development and improvement, with version 4.1 released in June 2003.

JACK Intelligent Agents™ are used:

• as intelligent assistants to humans, reducing the human workload
• to model intelligent behaviours in simulation
• as an autonomous control system for robotic vehicles
• in manufacturing control systems
• in telecommunications