Pervasive healthcare is an emerging research discipline, focusing on the development and application of pervasive and ubiquitous computing technology for healthcare and wellness. Pervasive healthcare seeks to respond to a variety of pressures on healthcare systems, including the increased incidence of life-style related and chronic diseases, emerging consumerism in healthcare, need for empowering patients and relatives for self-care and management of their health, and need to provide seamless access for healthcare services, independent of time and place. Pervasive healthcare may be defined from two perspectives. First, it is the development and application of pervasive computing (or ubiquitous computing, ambient intelligence) technologies for healthcare, health and wellness management. Second, it seeks to make healthcare available to anyone, anytime, and anywhere by removing locational, time and other restraints while increasing both the coverage and quality of healthcare. This book proposes to define the emerging area of pervasive health and introduce key management principles, most especially knowledge management, its tools, techniques and technologies. In addition, the book takes a socio-technical, patient-centric approach which serves to emphasize the importance of a key triumvirate in healthcare management namely, the focus on people, process and technology. Last but not least the book discusses in detail a specific example of pervasive health, namely the potential use of a wireless technology solution in the monitoring of diabetic patients.

Pervasive healthcare is an emerging research discipline, focusing on the development and application of pervasive and ubiquitous computing technology for healthcare and wellness. Pervasive healthcare seeks to respond to a variety of pressures on healthcare systems, including the increased incidence of life-style related and chronic diseases, emerging consumerism in healthcare, need for empowering patients and relatives for self-care and management of their health, and need to provide seamless access for healthcare services, independent of time and place. Pervasive healthcare may be defined from two perspectives. First, it is the development and application of pervasive computing (or ubiquitous computing, ambient intelligence) technologies for healthcare, health and wellness management. Second, it seeks to make healthcare available to anyone, anytime, and anywhere by removing locational, time and other restraints while increasing both the coverage and quality of healthcare. This book proposes to define the emerging area of pervasive health and introduce key management principles, most especially knowledge management, its tools, techniques and technologies. In addition, the book takes a socio-technical, patient-centric approach which serves to emphasize the importance of a key triumvirate in healthcare management namely, the focus on people, process and technology. Last but not least the book discusses in detail a specific example of pervasive health, namely the potential use of a wireless technology solution in the monitoring of diabetic patients.

This book gives detailed descriptions of the development of two large scale multiagent systems: Agent.Hospital and Agent.Enterprise. These two systems have been developed in close cooperation with more than 20 enterprises and hospitals. They demonstrate clearly that multiagent technology has a great potential for innovative information systems, if a high degree of flexibility of the overall systems is required, e.g. because human actors and technical systems exhibit a great degree of local autonomy, or if the work environment is highly dynamic.

This handbook gives an overview on engineering of business information systems with agent technology. It introduces into this challenge, describes how to identify and to address the relevant technical problems, and explains how to engineer, integrated and test multiagent systems for real world applications. The book gives detailed descriptions of the development of two large scale multiagent systems: Agent.Hospital and Agent.Enterprise. These two systems have been developed in close cooperation with more than 20 enterprises and hospitals. They demonstrate clearly that multiagent technology has a great potential for innovative information systems, if a high degree of flexibility of the overall systems is required, e.g. because human actors and technical systems exhibit a great degree of local autonomy, or if the work environment is highly dynamic.

In the light of the challenges that face today's organizations, there is a grow ing recognition that future market success and long term' survival of enter prises will increasingly depend upon the effective usage of information technology. Of late, a new generation of terminology has emerged to describe enterprises. This terminology draws heavily upon the virtual concep- virtual reality, virtual organization, virtual (working) environment, and indeed virtual product. However, developing computerized organisations for the 21st century demands serious thought with regard to the judicious integration of organizational theory, design and practice with research tools and methods from within information processing technology. Within this book, we approach this aim from the perspective of a radically decentralized (possibly virtual) enterprise. We assume that organizations are becoming increasingly process-orientated, rather than adhering to the former more traditional organizational structures based upon task oriented models. This approach has proved illuminating in that, due to the inherent autonomy of organizational subunits any approach to coordinating decentralized activ ities (including workflows and business processes) necessitates a cooperative style of problem solving. This book introduces the reader to a stimulating new field of interdiscipli nary research in cooperative problem solving. In Chapter 1 Kim presents a view of three central discip14tes, namely those of Organizational Theory, Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and Distributed Artificial Intelligence (DAI). The applications given here demonstrate how future enterprises will benefit from recent advances in the technological arena of cooperative knowledge processing."

For the sixth time, the German special interest group on Distributed Arti?cial Intelligence in cooperation with the Steering Committee of MATES organized the German Conference on Multiagent System Technologies - MATES 2008. This conference, which took place during September 23-26, 2008 in Kaisersla- ern, followed a series of successful predecessor conferences in Erfurt (2003, 2004, and 2006), Koblenz (2005), and Leipzig (2007). MATES 2008 was co-located with the 31st German Conference on Arti?cial Intelligence (KI 2008) and was hosted by the University of Kaiserslautern and the German Research Center for Arti?cial Intelligence (DFKI). As in recent years, MATES 2008 provided a distinguished, lively, and - terdisciplinary forum for researchers, users, and developers of agent technology to present and discuss the latest advances of research and development in the area of autonomous agents and multiagent systems. Accordingly, the topics of MATES 2008 covered the whole range: from the theory to applications of agent and multiagent technology. In all, 35 papers were submitted from authors from 11 countries. The accepted 16 full papers included in this proceedings volume and presented as talks at the conference were chosen based on a thorough and highly selective review process. Each paper was reviewed and discussed by at least three Program Committee members and revised according to their c- ments. We believe that the papers of this volume are a representative snapshot of current research and contribute to both theoretical and applied aspects of autonomous agents and multiagent systems.

Andreas J. Dietrich analysiert unter Verwendung der Neuen Institutionenokonomik die Anforderungen der Mass Customization an betriebliche Informationssysteme und entwickelt darauf aufbauend eine generische Anwendungsarchitektur."

Die Finanzberatung gehOrt zu den Anwendungsbereichen, in denen die Verarbeitung von Information die zentrale Rolle spielt. Deshalb besitzen gerade Finanzdienstleister eine Schrittrnacherfunktion bei der Unterstiitzung betrieblicher Prozesse durch Infonna- tionstechnologie. Wiihrend fUr den Einsatz konventioneller Technologien vor allem Ra- tionaIisierungsaspekte im Back Office-Bereich, also bei internen Leistungsprozessen, im Vordergrund standen, wird heute allgemein erwartet, daB wettbewerbsorientierte Kun- denanalyse-und -beratungsprozesse durch den Einsatz von Methoden der Kiinstlichen Intelligenz (KI) besser als bisher auf Kundenbedurfnisse und Unternehmensziele ausge- richtet werden konnen. Die erhofften Vorteile werden dabei vor allem im strategischen Bereich erwartet, sie umfassen die Wissensmultiplikation und -verfugbarkeit ebenso wie die Verbesserung der Konsistenz der Bearbeitung, indem zum Beispiel die Steuerung von Gesprachs-und Infonnationsflussen intelligent unterstutzt und damit menschliche Schwachen wie die Tagesfonn des Beraters zu einem gewissen Teil ausgeschaltet wer- denkonnen. Empirische Untersuchungen zeigen jedoch, daB die Finanzberatung bei Entwicklung und Einsatz von KI-Anwendungen Hingst nicht so innovativ ist wie bei der Einfiihrung konventioneller DV-LOsungen. So liegt der Bankensektor nach Untersuchungen von Mertens et. al. weltweit mit ca. 8% der Prototypen wissensbasierter Systeme im Ver- gleich zur Industrie (ca. 80%) weit zurilck. Einer der wichtigsten Griinde fOr dieses De- fIzit diirfte darin bestehen, daB die Methodendiskussion bisher weder auf Seite der KI noch auf Seite der Finanzberatung einen nennenswerten Raum einnimmt. Diese ist je- doch erforderlich, urn KI-Methoden ganz gezielt fUr bestimmte Anwendungen auswiihlen zu konnen, urn die Entwicklung domiinenspezijischer Shells zu initiieren bzw.