Organs Transplantation – How to Improve the Process?

The transplant of cadaveric organs must be performed in a short period of time in order to achieve satisfactory results. In Hospital S. João (HSJ), a large Portuguese hospital, during 2008 and 2009, 65 and 61 respectively potential donors were identified, but 12 and 19 of them were not validated as such in time. The number of validated donors could increase if the information workflow between donor hospitals and coordinator offices became more efficient. The goal of this work is to design and implement a multi-agent software platform to assist the information workflow between donor hospitals and coordinator offices. Through several meetings with HSJ coordinator office it was characterized a set of basic data that would allow coordinator offices to early identify possible organs donors. This preliminary characterization provided the necessary grounds for the development of an agent based software application allowing the storage and management of potential donors' information and optimizing the information workflow. The information workflow and the current communication processes characterization allowed the development of a multi-agent web platform, providing a way to assist the information workflow, between coordinator hospitals and their attached hospitals network. The platform also improves direct communication between coordinator offices about most relevant facts. By using this tool or a similar one the information workflow between donor hospitals and coordinator offices can become more efficient, optimizing the pre-transplantation tasks and consequently the number of successful transplants in our country.