Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems Applied in Healthcare

Dear Colleagues, 

The innovation of healthcare services, infrastructures, and processes is impelling and worthy. The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated how digital tools and artificial intelligence are necessary to improve the efficiency, efficacy, and quality of healthcare systems (i.e., by supporting tracking and data analysis). Intelligent agent-based systems are one of the most exciting research areas in artificial intelligence, which have proven to be a key component for the digitalization of healthcare. Specific topics like ageing, active living, chronic diseases, or others related to quality of life play an increasingly important role in this research field. This Special Issue calls for research discussing applications of intelligent agents in healthcare scenarios.

The topics of interest include but are not limited to:

• Agent-based methods for medical image segmentation or classification;
• Agent-based decision support systems for disease diagnosis;
• Agent-based medical data processing, such as EMR management and exchange, healthcare data streams from Internet of Things, HIS interoperability and integration;
• Mobile agents in hospital environments;
• Patient empowerment and chronic disease self-management through personalized agent-based systems and models;
• Intelligent agents that provide autonomous and remote care delivery;
• Clinical agent-based decision support systems, including recommender systems;
• Conversational agents and personal digital assistants for patient empowerment.

Dr. Sara Montagna
Prof. Dr. Michael Ignaz Schumacher
Dr. Stefano Mariani
Dr. Eloisa Vargiu
Dr. Davide Calvaresi
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Electronics is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.