  The excessive rate of patients arriving at accident and emergency centres is
a major problem facing South African hospitals. Patients are prioritized for
medical care through a triage process. Manual systems allow for inconsistency
and error. This paper proposes a novel system to automate accident and
emergency centre triage and uses this triage score along with an artificial
intelligence estimate of patient-doctor time to optimize the queue order. A
fuzzy inference system is employed to triage patients and a similar system
estimates the time but adapts continuously through fuzzy Q-learning. The
optimal queue order is found using a novel procedure based on genetic
algorithms. These components are integrated in a simple graphical user
interface. Live tests could not be performed but simulations reveal that the
average waiting time can be reduced by 48 minutes and priority is given to
urgent patients
