An Edge Based Multi-Agent Model for Improving Hospital Bed Management

ABSTRACT

Today, and due to the population growth, the healthcare field recognizes many difficulties and challenges in many countries, especially in the underdeveloped ones. The spread of COVID-19 has shown these difficulties such as the lack of equipment and the failing of patient admission process. Therefore, healthcare systems require quick, newer and more sophisticated solutions that match the speed of technology and the citizens' aspirations. In this context, we propose in this paper a model for improving and helping hospital managers to orchestrate the patient admission process. The proposed model deals with the hospital bed management in order to ensure a quick patient transfer to the nearest and the most appropriate hospital. The proposed model is based on the coupling of multi-agent an edge computing system. Multi-agent systems represent a powerful choice to develop complex, distributed, dynamic and interactive systems, which represent typically our case. In addition, edge computing ensures a real-time collection of data about the bed's availability in the neighboring hospitals in order to transfer the patient to the adequate one as quickly as possible. © 2021 IEEE.