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@article{142526,
        author = {Arefeh Mohammadi and Emmanuel S. Eneyo},
        title = {Home Health Care: A Multi-Agent System Based Approach to Appointment Scheduling},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {},
        volume = {2},
        number = {3},
        pages = {37-46},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=142526},
        abstract = {This paper examines the application of sweep-coverage mechanism of multi-agent systems (MAS) in a home healthcare setting. The MAS is a powerful tool which acts in an autonomous and intelligent approach in order to tackle the issues of large size and complexity of systems. Although the MAS are vastly utilized in multiple healthcare domains, in this research for the first time the sweep-coverage control of multi agent system is investigated for a specific area where patients receive treatments from a hospital. The therapists as agents travel to the patients’ location and complete the treatment process collaboratively. The problem of scheduling the therapists such that they are able to achieve the patients’ coverage is really challenging when it is important to use a resolute number of therapists. We adopted a heuristic algorithm from MAS which aims at determining the number of therapists who work in the treatment process while covering all the patients as the points of interests in a defined time period. The cooperation among the agents provides efficiency in the overall process of care and thereby resulting in a schedule for treatment process. The therapists should be scheduled to visit the patients based on an optimized and efficient timetable to ensure coordination of the execution of home healthcare activities. The long term purpose of the study is to generate a treatment schedule to ensure all of the patients are covered for treatment process within the predefined area using minimum resources.},
        keywords = {home healthcare, sweep coverage, multi agent system, heuristic algorithms, treatment schedule},
        month = {},
        }