Ed-Triage-Agent: A Framework For Human-Ai Collaborative Emergency Triage

AO_SCPLOWBSTRACTC_SCPLOWEmergency Department triage is a critical decision-making process in which clinicians must rapidly assess patient acuity under high cognitive load and time pressure. We present ED-Triage-Agent (ETA), a multi-agent AI framework designed to augment clinical decision-making in Emergency Severity Index (ESI) classification through human-AI collaboration. The system operates in two phases: (1) autonomous patient intake via a conversational agent that collects structured symptom histories and (2) collaborative acuity assessment in which specialized agents prioritize patients for vital sign collection and generate ESI classifications with explicit clinical reasoning. Unlike monolithic AI prediction systems, ETA mirrors clinical workflow by supporting decisions at each triage stage while preserving clinician autonomy. We describe the system architecture, agent design principles, and a preliminary evaluation methodology using the ESI Implementation Handbook case studies (60 standardized cases). This work proposes a model for deploying multi-agent AI systems in time-critical clinical environments where explainability and human oversight are essential. Code and the evaluation framework are available at https://github.com/Karthick47v2/ED-Triage-Agent.