title: Guaranteeing real-time response with limited resources.
abstract: Unanticipated problems detected by patient-monitoring systems may sometimes require real-time response in order to provide high-quality care and avoid catastrophic outcomes. In this paper, we present an approach for guaranteeing a response to such events by a monitoring agent even in situations where we have limited problem-solving resources. We show that an action-based hierarchy can accomplish this goal. We also analyze the performance of this hierarchy under varying resource availability and discuss decision-theoretic approaches to enable us to best structure such a hierarchy. We also describe an implementation of these ideas, called ReAct, in the BB1 architecture. All the ideas are illustrated with examples from the surgical intensive care unit (SICU).
authors.affiliation: Knowledge Systems Laboratory, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA 94304.
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Ash
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Gold
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Seiver
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Hayes-Roth
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D001185:Artificial Intelligence; D003365:Costs and Cost Analysis; D003662:Decision Theory; D015276:Health Care Rationing; D006801:Humans; D007362:Intensive Care Units; D008991:Monitoring, Physiologic / Q000295:instrumentation*