Distributed data mining from heterogeneous healthcare data repositories: towards an intelligent agent-based framework

This paper presents a case for an intelligent agent-based framework for knowledge discovery in a distributed healthcare environment comprising multiple heterogeneous healthcare data repositories. Data-mediated knowledge discovery, especially from multiple heterogeneous data resources, is a tedious process and imposes significant operational constraints on end-users. We demonstrate that autonomous, reactive and proactive intelligent agents provide an opportunity to generate end-user-oriented, packaged, value-added decision-support/strategic planning services for healthcare professionals and managers. We propose the use of intelligent agents to implement a distributed agent-based data mining information structure that provides a suite of healthcare-oriented decision-support/strategic planning services.