Emergent holarchies for e-health applications: a case in glaucoma diagnosis

Abstract

This paper extends the holonic enterprise paradigm to the medical domain. A medical holarchy is a system of collaborative medical entities (patients, physicians, medical devices, etc.) that work together to provide a needed medical service for the benefit of the patient. Representing holons as software agents enables the development of e-health environments as web-centric medical holarchies with a wide area of application in tele-medicine. The back up of latest wireless and advanced communication technologies enables emergence of medical holarchies for ubiquitous healthcare. A case study in glaucoma progression monitoring illustrates the benefits of our approach.