The UbiMedic Framework to Support Medical Emergencies by Ubiquitous Computing

This paper investigates the feasibility of employing the Software Agent technology in the highly dynamic and variable context of healthcare emergency coordination and decision-support domain. We introduce the design of an agent-based middleware tailored to the requirements of such context and propose a framework, called UbiMedic, for the implementation and deployment of services, like monitoring services, communications and remote medical measurements in injured people. From the analysis of the framework, we are able to identify some of the major technical requirements it should meet as well as challenges to be addressed for effective use in commercial applications. We choose software agents as the key enabling technology because they offer a single, general framework in which large-scale, distributed real-time decision-support applications can be implemented more efficiently.