A Group Decision Support System for Staging of Cancer

The TNM classification system was developed as a tool for physicians to stage different types of cancer based on standard criteria, according to a common language of cancer staging. Staging reports are usually performed by oncologists but sometimes are also done by physicians not specialized in this area. In this paper, it is presented a multi-agent system to support group decision that helps meeting participants to reach and to justify a solution. With the increasing use of web applications to perform the Electronic Medical Record on healthcare facilities, this system has the potential to be easily integrated in order to support the medical and clinical e-learning and to improve patient assistance. In fact, the usual need for documentation and specific information by the medical staff can be easily provided by these systems, making a new steep towards a paper free healthcare system.