Monitoring intelligent system for the Intensive Care Unit using RFID and multi-agent systems

In an environment where patients´ lives are at stake, Intensive Care Units (ICUs) become a good scenario for the implementation of Ambient Intelligence, helping medical professionals in their task of retrieving the well-being to patients. INTCare project is a system that aims the real-time monitoring of patients, and predicts their outcome in a short period of time. When patients´ vital signs get out of range, an alert system warns medical staff about the patient condition. PaLMS, a Patient Localization and Monitoring System, is being developed and tested in Centro Hospitalar do Porto - CHP, a hospital in Portugal. It uses RFID technology with a multi-agent architecture for communications inside hospital, thus providing a way to improve INTCare by ending the storage and analysis of redundant data, collected when the patient isn´t in the bed, plus stopping the warning events triggered by the vital signs out of range.