Several modern complex distributed systems are composed of customisable building blocks, known as agents. Comprehensive works in the field enumerate four important characteristics of agent technology. First, agents possess an internal knowledge-based state that can be dynamically altered. Second, they have dynamic reasoning capabilities that determine their internal behaviour through constraints or goals. Third, they sustain a communication status that enables them to interact with agents or human entities. Last, they feature a unique identity that provides roaming and service advertising capabilities.

Extensive research in agent systems has been conducted in Europe, as evidenced by the reach of the AgentLink membership . Data mining agents present human researchers with a set of potential hypotheses deduced from the data sources. Thus, with the information explosion caused by genomics and proteomics research, there is a great need for automated information-gathering agents in order to assist human researchers conducting automated or semi-automated testing of data. Nevertheless, scant multi-disciplinary research has been channelled to the bioinformatics domain, where numerous databases and analysis tools are independently administered in geographically distinct localities, lending themselves almost ideally to the adoption of a multi-agent approach.

Initiatives such as the “Modelling Adult Stem Cells as Multi-agent Systems” in the UK, the ones emanated from the Cesena group in Italy, BioAgent, and InterLab present some innovative approaches to agent systems in the biological sciences in Europe. Furthermore, Geneweaver, DECAF, and  MIAKT introduce the use of agents and web services to genome analysis and decision support. In particular MIAKT, led by the University of Southampton, provides support for Multi-Disciplinary Meetings (MDMs) between medical practitioners with different expertise, helping them to perform a collaborative diagnosis and plan of action for symptomatic, focal breast diseases.

A distributed agent system is as ubiquitous and reliable as its underlying platform. Grids provide an innovative approach to distributed computing. Computational and data grids have started to appear as propellers of science and technology in several part of the globe. Some of these general efforts are grouped into major initiatives such as the European DataGrid, the IST EuroGrid programme, the Japanese Grid Consortium, the Global Grid Forum, and the Teragrid in the US. Furthermore, the HealthGrid and the Biomedical Informatics Research Network DataGrid focus on bioinformatics and biomedical applications.

HealthAgents intends to build a completely distributed repository with local databases, collaborating under the BioAgent architecture. Grid technologies such as multi-site data partition and distributed data sharing will permit the seamless access to different databases across sites. A distributed Decision Support System (d-DSS) will furnish a completely new approach to the brain tumour diagnosis. Since inferences from local predictions may well conflict with one another, reasoned argument between intelligent agents, acting on behalf of scientists, in a multi-agent system, will foster consensus.

Experts within the consortium University of Southampton and MicroArt