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Team Dynamics and Conflict Resolution
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Understanding intelligent agents: analysis
and synthesis
John Fox, Martin Beveridge and David Glasspool
London Research Institute, Cancer Research UK, 44 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London WC2A 3PX, UK
E-mail: {john.fox,martin.beveridge,david.glasspool}@cancer.org.uk
Abstract. Current views of intelligent agent technologies are reviewed with respect to (a) their general cognitive capabilities
and (b) the classic Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) model. A benchmark agent model is developed as a basis for analyzing and
comparing agent systems. PROforma is an agent technology that has grown out of work in modeling medical expertise and the
benchmark is used to carry out a case study analysis of this technology, looking at it from three contrasting points of view:
logic programming, object-oriented programming and agent-oriented programming. These viewpoints yield different insights
into the strengths and weaknesses of PROforma and lead to a clarification and consolidation of the benchmark agent features. The
consolidated model offers a useful framework for analysis and comparison of other agent systems in medicine or other domains.
Keywords: Agent programming, object oriented programming, logic programming
1. Introduction
Research on “intelligent agents” has diverse motivations,
ranging from general theoretical interests in AI
to practical objectives of building flexible distributed
systems in specific application domains. As agent technologies
mature so also does the interest in applying
them in medicine. Agent technologies offer advanced
platforms for building expert systems to assist individual
clinicians in their work [20] and distributed agent
systems have the potential to improve the operation of
healthcare organizations, where failures of communication
and coordination are important sources of error
[6].
As computer science advances, however, there is a
danger that older technologies are neglected. Worse
still the advocates of different computing paradigms
sometimes engage in unhelpful disputes about the relative
weaknesses of their preferred approaches, rather
than looking for ways of combining their different
strengths. Historical examples include the debates
about logic programming versus functional programming,
object-oriented databases versus relational databases
and rapid prototyping versus formal software engineering.
No one view has a monopoly on insight,
however, and it would be desirable if novel paradigms