Supporting prenatal care in the public healthcare system in a newly industrialized country

Most of women's deaths related to pregnancy occur in newly industrialized countries. In association with gynecologists and obstetricians of the Antonio Pedro University Hospital (HUAP) in Brazil, we have identified deficiencies in the prenatal care of the Brazilian public healthcare system that can be computer-supported. They are mainly related to protocols that must be followed in the primary healthcare institutions and the referral process that must take place when a high risk pregnancy is identified, besides other functionalities that can be automated by a software application. In this paper, the Prenatal Care Unified System (SUAP) project will be introduced, which provides a Multi-agent System for supporting and monitoring the prenatal care. This project uses agent technology to manage healthcare records, to act as a clinical decision support system, and to handle the logistics of high risk pregnancy cases. We also describe the challenges encountered during the implementation of the SUAP and discuss the benefits that an agent-based solution provided to the development of our system.