EMIKA - Real-Time Controlled Mobile Information Systems in Health Care Applications

This paper presents an approach to control and management of real-time hospital patient logistics by decentralized coordination in a time-critical application environment. Responsible for coordination are software agents implemented on mobile, spontaneously network end-user devices like PDAs or RFID chips. The coordination is achieved by real-time bilateral negotiation, location awareness and exception handling. The application scenario of the EMIKA project is the patient logistics of the University Hospital Freiburg in the areas of transport service and radiology.