Internet agents for telemedicine services.

Telemedicine can be defined as telematic support of collaboration between distant medical professionals, co-operating on shared resources of various kinds. Attention should be paid to telematics and informatics concepts, especially those oriented towards collaboration. In particular, the recent agent paradigm seems suitable for the analysis, design and development of telemedicine services because of its commitment to intercommunication and sharing of resources. The present paper is an introduction to the agent paradigm from its theoretical basis to the technological issues, and describes an agent-based approach to telemedicine, specifically applied to telepathology applications. The system is based on an agent-based model and template (JAMES) using Java, which has been used to implement a prototype multipurpose telepathology application based on a federated agency architecture.