Search results

Issues related to economic development and growth are oft discussed to illustrate the health of a nation. However, such development is constrained by the inequality parameter of the representative society. Again, economic fluctuations arising from several crises may hinder the representative nation from getting on a smooth path to development. Now, augmentation of crises along with the presence of inequality may trigger economic vulnerabilities, leading to unsustainable economic development. Against this backdrop, we initially frame a theoretical model to capture the above-mentioned issues and try to derive plausible economic interpretations for the same. To verify the same in a more robust manner, we consider a panel of 30 developing countries from Africa, spanning the time period 1980–2020. Both the health status and the education status of our panel of countries are used to explore the sustainability issue in the presence of income inequality. All data have been collected from the World Development Indicators (WDI) and Standardized World Income Inequality Database (SWIID) (Table 21.1

Variables Description.

Due to land resource scarcity, sustainable urban development in high-density cities has long been challenging. As such, many cities are formulating plans to “dig deep”, resulting in more citizens working and/or staying underground for longer periods of time. However, owing to the particularities of underground space, the factors involved in the creation of a healthy environment are different from those involved in aboveground developments. This study thus aims to investigate the influences of various underground environment factors on users' health through a holistic approach.

To achieve this aim, 12 underground sites and 12 corresponding aboveground sites are selected for a large-scale questionnaire survey, resulting in 651 survey samples. The survey covers post-occupancy evaluation of health (physical and psychosocial), underground environmental quality (visual, thermal, acoustic comfort, indoor air quality and ventilation), space design and greenery. Independent-sample T-test, Pearson correlation, multiple regression modelling and structural equation modelling are used to investigate whether significant differences exist between health of underground and aboveground users, and to develop an underground environment-health model for unveiling the significant associations between underground environment factors and users' health. To cross validate the results, an objective field measurement study is further conducted on six underground sites. The objective measurement results are used to cross validate the survey results.

The questionnaire results provide the following evidence: (1) health of underground users is significantly poorer than that of their aboveground counterparts; (2) underground development users' health is significantly affected by space design, greenery and environmental quality in terms of thermal comfort, indoor air quality, ventilation and acoustic comfort but not visual comfort; and (3) amongst the various identified factors, space design has the strongest predicting effects on human health. The field study echoes the survey findings and further unveils the relationships between different environmental factors and human health.

The results shed light on the importance of distinguishing between underground developments and aboveground ones in various guidelines and standards, especially those related to space management.

This paper aims to concentrate on recent innovations in flexible wearable sensor technology tailored for monitoring vital signals within the contexts of wearable sensors and systems developed specifically for monitoring health and fitness metrics.

In recent decades, wearable sensors for monitoring vital signals in sports and health have advanced greatly. Vital signals include electrocardiogram, electroencephalogram, electromyography, inertial data, body motions, cardiac rate and bodily fluids like blood and sweating, making them a good choice for sensing devices.

This report reviewed reputable journal articles on wearable sensors for vital signal monitoring, focusing on multimode and integrated multi-dimensional capabilities like structure, accuracy and nature of the devices, which may offer a more versatile and comprehensive solution.

The paper provides essential information on the present obstacles and challenges in this domain and provide a glimpse into the future directions of wearable sensors for the detection of these crucial signals. Importantly, it is evident that the integration of modern fabricating techniques, stretchable electronic devices, the Internet of Things and the application of artificial intelligence algorithms has significantly improved the capacity to efficiently monitor and leverage these signals for human health monitoring, including disease prediction.

While science has researched the impact of air pollution on human health, the economic dimension of it has been less researched so far. Renewable energy consumption is an important factor in determining the level of life expectancy and reducing health expenditure. Thus, this study aims to investigate the impact of renewable energy, carbon emissions, health expenditure and urbanization on life expectancy in G-7 countries over the period of 2000–2019.

This study has adopted a novel Method of Moments Quantile Regression (MMQR). Furthermore, as a robustness check for MMQR, the fully modified ordinary least square, dynamic ordinary least squares and fixed effect ordinary least square estimators have been used.

The results indicated that renewable energy consumption, health expenditure and urbanization lead to an increase in life expectancy across all quantiles (5th to 95th), whereas higher carbon dioxide emissions reduce life expectancy at birth across all the quantiles (5th to 95th).

The empirical findings conclude that governments should recognize their potential in renewable energy sources and devise policies such as tax-related regulations, or relevant incentives to encourage further investments in this field.

This paper in comparison to the other research studies used MMQR to investigate the impact of factors affecting life expectancy. Also, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, so far no study has investigated the impact of renewable energy on life expectancy in G-7 countries.

This study aims to investigate the impact of regular Kung Fu and Taekwondo practice on the health and quality of life among elderly individuals in the Maule region, Chile.

The authors designed a 12-week Kung Fu and Taekwondo workshop with activities suitable for their age. Through semistructured interviews (at the beginning and the end of the workshop), along with periodic monitoring of vital signs and cardiovascular components, the authors observed an improvement in participants’ physical (strength, speed of reaction and flexibility) and psychological conditions (self-esteem and resilience), quality of life (relationships with family and friends and ability to deal with stressful events in working life) and health (waist circumference, percentage of oxygen saturation in blood, blood pressure, among other values).

From these results, the authors affirm that this workshop improves health and physical condition and helps the participants develop the coping capacity to deal with stressful situations and complicated interpersonal relationships. In this sense, the authors conclude that Kung Fu and Taekwondo as regular sports activities can benefit senior citizens’ aging process.

This research is based on an original study project.

The aims of the current study were twofold: first, to rank the world’s emerging economies based on a novel National Intellectual Capital Index (NICI) and its components; and second, to examine the impact of NICI and its components on economic growth, measured in terms of real GDP per capita.

We employed principal component analysis (PCA) to construct the novel NICI based on five key socio-economic indicators including (1) national human capital, (2) national structural capital, (3) national relational capital, (4) national informational capital and (5) national innovational capital. These indicators are publicly available for many countries. The index was generated by considering the most appropriate socio-economic indicators as precise measures of NIC from the Penn world table (version 10.0), the World Bank’s database of world governance and development indicators and the KOF globalization across the selected emerging economies.

The empirical findings revealed that national human capital is a significant driver of NIC, corresponding to higher economic growth. This is followed by national informational capital, national relational capital, national innovation capital and national structural capital. Furthermore, results indicate that the contribution of national structural capital is marginal compared to other critical strands of NIC.

NIC is generally considered the most valuable strategic resource for driving knowledge economies, especially in the Industry 5.0 revolution. Ranking emerging economies based on the NICI sheds light on the accumulated stock of NIC and how it contributes to and improves the economic growth of these economies. The stock of NIC is considered a critical success factor for measuring both current and future economic prosperity. Therefore, using the socio-economic indicators of KOFGI as accurate measures of NICI will assist policymakers in formulating and implementing relevant policies to enhance the accumulation of knowledge-based capital, which are critical components of NIC.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study of its kind, both theoretically and empirically, to measure the National Intellectual Capital Index (NICI) using the most nascent socio-economic indicators of NIC. Moving forward, this study evaluates the impact of NICI and its components on economic growth, which is a relatively sparse area of research in the context of emerging knowledge economies.

Value-based healthcare suggested using patient-reported information to complement the information available in the medical records and administrative healthcare data to provide insights into patients' perceptions of satisfaction, experience and self-reported outcomes. However, little attention has been devoted to questions about factors fostering the use of patient-reported information to create value at the system level.

Action research design is carried out to elicit possible triggers using the case of patient-reported experience and outcome data for breast cancer women along their clinical pathway in the clinical breast network of Tuscany (Italy).

The case shows that communication and engagement of multi-stakeholder representation are needed for making information actionable in a multi-level, multispecialty care pathway organized in a clinical network; moreover, political and managerial support from higher level governance is a stimulus for legitimizing the use for quality improvement. At the organizational level, an external facilitator disclosing and discussing real-world uses of collected data is a trigger to link measures to action. Also, clinical champion(s) and clear goals are key success factors. Nonetheless, resource munificent and dedicated information support tools together with education and learning routines are enabling factors.

Current literature focuses on key factors that impact performance information use often considering unidimensional performance and internal sources of information. The use of patient/user-reported information is not yet well-studied especially in supporting quality improvement in multi-stakeholder governance. The work appears relevant for the implications it carries, especially for policymakers and public sector managers when confronting the gap in patient-reported measures for quality improvement.

The use of economic sanctions has grown dramatically in recent decades. Nevertheless, many arguments are presented in the public policy space regarding their effects on target populations. The author presents the first systematic analysis of the effects of sanctions on living conditions in target countries.

This paper provides a comprehensive survey and assessment of the literature on the effects of economic sanctions on living standards in target countries. The author identifies 31 studies that apply quantitative econometric or calibration methods to cross-country and national data to assess the impact of economic sanctions on indicators of human and economic development. The author provides in-depth discussions of three sanctions episodes—Iran, Afghanistan and Venezuela—that illustrate the channels through which sanctions affect living conditions in target countries.

Of the 31 studies, 30 find that sanctions have negative effects on outcomes ranging from per capita income to poverty, inequality, mortality and human rights. The author provides new results showing that 54 countries—27% of all countries and 29% of the world economy— are sanctioned today, up from only 4% of countries in the 1960s. In the three cases discussed, sanctions that restricted the access of governments to foreign exchange limited the ability of states to provide essential public goods and services and generated substantial negative spillovers on private sector and nongovernmental actors.

This is the first literature survey that systematically assesses the quantitative evidence on the effect of sanctions on living conditions in target countries.

The purpose of this study was to determine the factors associated with functionality, a clinical criterion that could predict frailty in the elderly people in a rural context.

This project is a cross-sectional descriptive analysis of 342 adults of age >60 years who are residents of Putumayo province in Colombia. Information regarding demographic characteristics, medical history, health perception and current illness was collected. The Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) protocol was used to perform cognitive evaluation; the Yesavage Geriatric Depression Scale was used to establish depressive symptoms; and the Hamilton Rating Scale was used to assess anxiety level. Questionnaire was used to evaluate performance on instrumental activities of daily living that lead to functional independence [daily life questionnaire (DLQ)]. The medical outcomes study scale was used to assess social parameters.

A moderate and negative correlation was found between the DLQ score and age (r = −0.49; 95% CI: −0.57 to −0.47), whereas a positive correlation was found with education (r = 0.17; 95% CI: 0.07–0.27). Older adults with economic independence achieved a higher score in functional performance than those with economic dependence (standardized mean difference = 0.55; 95% CI: 0.33–0.77). This study observed a moderate correlation a moderate correlation between the MMSE cognitive performance (r = 0.56; 95% CI: 0.48−0.63) and the depressive symptomatology of Yesavage Scale (r = −0.36, 95% CI: −0.44 to −0.26). Finally, the structural model determined that age (r = −0.37), economic dependence (r = −0.383) and cognitive state (r = 0.309) determine the functional component.

This study provides empirical support about older adults living in rural contexts, around the functionality variable from a multidimensional approach, highlighting the sociodemographic and cognitive variables. Consequently, the policy of social support in older adults must be oriented toward the development of a range of divergent intervention strategies.

The study deals with the assessment of functionality in the elderly people from an interdisciplinary approach in the rural setting which presents a greater risk of physical and socioeconomic vulnerability. Therefore, the community, the health professionals and the government entities should help implement active aging programs for this population.

This paper explores the Adoption of Technological Innovation (ATI) in the healthcare industry. It investigates how the literature has evolved, and what are the emerging innovation dimensions in the healthcare industry adoption studies.

We followed a mixed-method approach combining bibliometric methods and topic modeling, with 57 papers being deeply analyzed.

Our results identify three latent topics. The first one is related to the digitalization in healthcare with a specific focus on the COVID-19 pandemic. The second one groups up the word combinations dealing with the research models and their constructs. The third one refers to the healthcare systems/professionals and their resistance to ATI.

The study’s sample selection focused on scientific journals included in the Academic Journal Guide and in the FT Research Rank. However, the paper identifies trends that offer managerial insights for stakeholders in the healthcare industry.

ATI has the potential to revolutionize the health service delivery system and to decentralize services traditionally provided in hospitals or medical centers. All this would contribute to a reduction in waiting lists and the provision of proximity services.

The originality of the paper lies in the combination of two methods: bibliometric analysis and topic modeling. This approach allowed us to understand the ATI evolutions in the healthcare industry.