Drugs Trading in the Hospital Pharmacies Through a Multi-Agent Electronic Market

Several challenges involved in the reduction of hospital drugs expenditures are difficult to be solved, at least nowadays, but it is important to look for possible ways to undertake or reduce the problem. In this paper we propose an electronic market as a possible solution to reduce costs and time for the hospital pharmacies while increasing flexibility and access to new possibilities of negotiation. This electronic market is based on a Distributed Multi-Agent System which has a multicriteria negotiation and uses ontology-based services to solve the interoperability problems. The potential solutions obtained through the electronic market interactions will compete with the solutions found by the hospital pharmacy own system. We believe that using our system architecture and services is a step forward in achieving the cooperation between hospital pharmacies and pharmaceutical drug manufacturers around the world. However, we are also aware of challenges and problems that might arise from using this approach.