Software agents in surgery: an update.

Abstract

Intelligent and, thus, autonomously reacting software programs are capable of handling a lot of different tasks as has been realized in economics and network administration. The same so-called software agents can be used for a variety of organizational tasks in medicine. Some software agents already manage an individual patient's health care record from documentation to ambulant or stationary admission, surgical planning, and many other tasks which currently consume more than half of a physician's daily working time. Hence, not only a large potential of time, but also of economical savings result to the physicians' new disposition.