An intelligent agent approach to improving the coordination efficiency in donor kidney distribution process

Kidney transplantation is an effective treatment for an end-stage renal disease. The donor kidneys need to be matched with appropriate patients, distributed and transplanted very quickly (less than 40 hours) in order to achieve optimal medical results. So far, most researches focus on developing algorithms to satisfy genetic matching between the donor and the recipient and waiting time criteria. The actual kidney distribution process however, is quite complex but still being handled manually which often results in unnecessary delays. In this paper we analyze the bottlenecks in current deceased donor kidney distribution process and investigate how agent technology can be applied to improve this process. We propose a distributed multi-agent system operating in a mobile communication environment to assist transplant coordinators in coordinating with multi-parties in this time-critical distribution process. A prototype system has been developed to demonstrate the feasibility of such system.