Implantable medical devices as agents and part of multiagent systems

The consideration of medical implants as an increasingly important population of isolated agents is a valuable perspective that should not be ignored by the agent community. Implanted Medical Device (IMD) applications are complex, naturally distributed, and could benefit from such attention. This paper explores implantable medical devices and their attributes in an agent context and terminology. It submits that an increasing body of IMDs should be considered agents and that there are opportunities for incorporating these implantable agents into multiagent systems (MAS). This will include: (i) Discussion of several IMDs in traditional agent terms, (ii) Discussion of trends and issues in IMDs related to their potential role in MAS. (iii) Experimental exploration of some potential MAS applications in the problem of medical monitoring, (iv) Broader discussion of the value of framing IMDs and applications involving them in the agent paradigm.