@MASTERSTHESIS{ 2019:1262983254,
 	title = {An interactive agent to support hospital bed allocation based on plan validation},
 	year = {2019},
 	url = "http://tede2.pucrs.br/tede2/handle/tede/8709",
 	abstract = "This dissertation presents a study on intelligent agents for assisting hospital staff in charge of resource allocation, particularly hospital bed allocation. We investigate and apply an approach based on a smart agent able to validate bed allocation plans and to interact with hospital professionals using natural language communication. In order to achieve the aims of this work, we developed a web-based simulator of hospital bed allocation integrated with a chatbot for interaction with the user, as well as a smart agent programmed in Jason that uses VAL as a plan validator to check if there is any flaw in a user-made allocation. Our agent is able to analyse the feedback given by the validator and pass the information to the user using natural language through the chatbot. We analysed our approach with professionals responsible for bed allocation in two hospitals in Porto Alegre – RS, Brazil. We have obtained satisfactory feedback from these professionals, who also made several suggestion for future improvement of our chatbot. This way, it is possible to conclude that interaction with the chatbot can be considered easy and the approach developed is useful in daily bed-allocation routine, but that there are other important tasks that our agent can also do and that we hope to address in future work.",
 	publisher = {Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul},
 	scholl = {Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciência da Computação},
 	note = {Escola Politécnica}
}