From Passive to Proactive: A Hierarchical Multi-Agent Framework for Automated Medical Pre-Consultation

TL;DR

This paper introduces a multi-agent AI system for medical triage that improves accuracy and adaptability across diverse healthcare settings by transforming patient symptoms into precise department recommendations.

Contribution

It presents a novel hierarchical multi-agent framework with inquiry and classification guidance mechanisms for more accurate and adaptable medical triage.

Findings

Achieved 89.6% accuracy in primary department classification

Achieved 74.3% accuracy in secondary department classification

System adapts efficiently to different hospital structures

Abstract

The post-pandemic surge in healthcare demand, coupled with critical nursing shortages, has placed unprecedented pressure on medical triage systems, necessitating innovative AI-driven solutions. We present a multi-agent interactive intelligent system for medical triage that addresses three fundamental challenges in current AI-based triage systems: inadequate medical specialization leading to misclassification, heterogeneous department structures across healthcare institutions, and inefficient detail-oriented questioning that impedes rapid triage decisions. Our system employs three specialized agents--RecipientAgent, InquirerAgent, and DepartmentAgent--that collaborate through Inquiry Guidance mechanism and Classification Guidance Mechanism to transform unstructured patient symptoms into accurate department recommendations. To ensure robust evaluation, we constructed a comprehensive Chinese medical triage dataset from "Ai Ai Yi Medical Network", comprising 3,360 real-world cases spanning 9 primary departments and 62 secondary departments. Experimental results demonstrate that our multi-agent system achieves 89.6% accuracy in primary department classification and 74.3% accuracy in secondary department classification after four rounds of patient interaction. The system's dynamic matching based guidance mechanisms enable efficient adaptation to diverse hospital configurations while maintaining high triage accuracy. We successfully developed this multi-agent triage system that not only adapts to organizational heterogeneity across healthcare institutions but also ensures clinically sound decision-making.