Search results

The high-risk/high-stress nature of hospital emergency departments has made handoffs (i.e. patient transfers across organizational units) an area of significant safety consequence, as evidenced by numerous studies and 2006 Comprehensive Accreditation Manual for Hospitals: The Official Handbook (CAMH). Joint Commission Resources, Inc.: Author; 2005. This same high-risk/high-stress environment is known for generating resistance to traditional deficit-based, external expert driven approaches to improvement. The authors describe how one hospital overcame this resistance by using an Appreciative Inquiry approach to the redesign of the information flow and organizational roles within a mission-critical area of the hospital. Rather than designing to ameliorate the root causes of ineffective handoffs, this positive lens approach (Appreciative Inquiry) was used to engage staff in identifying and expanding upon their most effective handoff experiences. Implications for shifting from problem-based design to a positive lens approach in the creation of micro-information systems and new organizational processes are discussed.

Several new network types have emerged over the last couple of years. Many of these networks are being connected together to provide mobile users with the capability of staying always connected to the Internet which requires seamless transitions from one network to another without causing interruption to on‐going connections. To maintain connectivity during handoff, all the networks that are accessible to the mobile station need to be known. The paper aims to propose a novel energy‐efficient network discovery approach that enables fast discovery and selection of available access networks.

The performance of the proposed approach over an actual network testbed consisting of heterogeneous networks (such as wireless local area, cellular) is evaluated.

It was found that the approach yields between 12.4 and 19.1 per cent improvement in battery power consumption over other network discovery approaches.

The paper proposes and implements a novel scheme to discover wireless networks in a multi‐access environment consisting of heterogeneous networking technologies.

Notes that cellular is the inevitable future architecture for the personal communication service system (PCS). This is important for wireless mobile communications and will eventually be integrated with the Internet. Recent initiatives to add mobility to the Internet and packet data services for the next generation cellular systems are being considered by many mobile service providers, and providing a seamless support for IP‐based packet switched services is an important issue. Mobile Internet Protocol version 6 (Ipv6) is a new version of the Internet Protocol that was standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). It supports mobility and is presently being standardized by the IETF Mobile IP Working Group. Discusses the current cellular support based on Ipv6 and points out the shortfalls of using Mobile IP. Highlights protocols especially for mobile management schemes which can optimize a high speed mobile station moving among small wireless cells.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how and with which mechanisms health care professionals in practice design for collaboration to solve collective hospital tasks, which cross occupational and departmental boundaries.

An in-depth multiple-case study of five departments across four hospitals facing fast to slow response task requirements was carried out using interviews and observations. The selected cases were revealing as the departments had designed and formalized their daily hospital operations differently to solve collaboration and performance issues.

Local collaboration across occupational and departmental boundaries requires bundles of behavioral formalization elements (e.g. standardized plans, resource allocation decisions, assigned formal roles, and handoff routines), and liaison devices (e.g. huddles, boards, and physical proximity), which are used in parallel or sequence. The authors label this “designed collaboration bundles.” These bundles supplement the central organizational structures, processes, and support systems less capable of ensuring fluent coordination at the front line.

Health care professionals and hospital managers can consider designing bundles of organizational design features to proactively develop and ensure collaboration capable of solving collective tasks and bridging departmental and occupational silos to improve health care delivery.

This research paper addresses the fundamental organizational challenge of how to achieve efficient collaboration by studying how formal structures and processes are used in combination on the hospital floor, thereby going beyond previous research that studies these mechanisms individually.

To present a combination of Bluetooth handoff techniques and scatternet formation to adapt to varying topologies and traffic changes.

Through ad hoc networking with Bluetooth, devices could participate in multiple piconets, which form the scatternet. Although the details of scatternet implementation are not specified in the Bluetooth specification, much research has been carried out to propose different models of implementation. This paper presents a combination of the techniques of handoff and scatternet formation to adapt to varying topologies and traffic changes. Analysis of network performance is presented to confirm the feasibility of real implementation.

Provides a novel and practical design, compatible with Bluetooth specification, which is shown by experimental results to be an efficient design in providing a scatternet formation approach, while at the same time maintaining a low data error rate to support data and voice.

This paper presents Bluetooth handoff and scatternet formation techniques to extend geographical coverage and increase system capacity with adaptation to varying topologies and traffic changes. The techniques presented are compatible with Bluetooth specifications 1.0, 1.1 and 1.2.

This paper proposes a new Heterogeneous Multi‐hop Cellular IP (MCIP) network that integrates multi‐hop communication with Cellular IP. MCIP increases the coverage of the wireless network and improves the network robustness against adverse propagation phenomena by supporting communication in dead zones and areas with poor radio coverage. MCIP includes three components: location management, connection management and route reconfiguration. Location management is responsible for maintaining the location information for Mobile Stations (MSs) in a local domain. Connection management establishes an initial path for data transmission and a route reconfiguration mechanism is proposed to take advantage of various multi‐hop connection alternatives available based on terminal interfaces, network accessibility and topology. Our simulation results show that MCIP performs well in networks of various sizes including scalability, throughput, and packet delay.

Given the complexity and difficulties of the health sector, the question that this study attempts to answer is as follows: what are the main results of studies on business process management (BPM) and lean in the health sector? The purpose of this paper is to analyze the results of studies that address the promotion of BPM and lean in the health sector.

To conduct a survey of published studies using the BPM and lean approach in healthcare, a search was performed in the Scopus, Web of Science, and PubMed databases in two steps. The first step consisted of the collection and analysis of data related to the BPM approach in the health sector, based on a survey of published articles on this topic. The second step consisted of the collection and analysis of data related to the use of lean in the same sector, based on the survey of systematic reviews published in major databases.

The main results of the studies that address the promotion of BPM and lean in the health sector are as follows: a reduced length of hospitalization, increased patient satisfaction, increased patient efficiency and safety, a reduction in the time of notification of infection, help with organizational change, understanding the end-to-end process, increased motivation, understanding the importance of some handoffs for patient safety, improvements in quality indicators in the emergency department, and improvements in the organization’s focus on high-level processes. By contrast, a single study showed difficulties in promoting management focused on processes in which decisions are unique and difficult to model.

The results may help in the identification of research gaps in the promotion of BPM and lean healthcare and in the development of relevant research. In addition, by understanding how health organizations are promoting management focused on processes and the results obtained with this approach, managers from other organizations, especially in this sector, can reflect and develop similar actions that seek to improve the quality of services offered, increase productivity and customer satisfaction, and reduce costs, errors, and waiting times.

In today's internationalized world, value creation consists of knowledge and work integration involving workers from around the world. Members of these globally distributed work teams (GDWT) encounter organizational behavior issues (identity, cultural differences, and leadership) and organization design issues (dependencies, information processing, media use, and teamwork structures). While most research on GDWT focuses on the first set of issues, this chapter is among the few to systematically explore the second set. We propose and elaborate on strategies for either reducing the intensity of collaboration, or enabling teams to collaborate intensely on a global scale. Implications for research and practice are explored.

The purpose of this paper is to show with figures the potentialities of knowledge‐based engineering (KBE) methods in new product development (NPD). It estimates the business value generated by a tool which integrates the handoff between engineering groups of a large aerospace company.

The paper is based on three years of observation and interviews at a leading Italian firm. A process‐based approach is used for assessing business value.

The KBE application automated the preparation of data transferred to computer‐aided engineering engineers for analysis by computer‐aided design engineers and reduced the time required by more than 90 percent. This allowed time savings which contributed to enhance product quality.

The paper is based on a single case, though its findings are consistent with prior studies. Future research will implement like applications in other contexts at the subject firm and other firms.

The paper helps managers to understand the uses and potential value of KBE applications, enhancing the awareness of NPD practitioners in a field which is still partially untapped.

The paper combines discussion of the technical aspects of implementing a KBE tool with estimates of performance improvement achieved. It can be a useful illustration of a good practice and a proof‐of‐concept for further implementations in complex engineering settings.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the required functionalities on providing internet connectivity and mobility management for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), present discovered problems such as inconsistent contexts, and provide the corresponding solutions. It also provides a hybrid metric for the load‐balance of intra/inter‐MANET traffic over multiple internet gateways (IGWs).

The paper uses both mathematical analyses and simulations to discover the required functionalities and problems on providing internet connectivity and mobility management for MANETs. The proposed hybrid metric for IGW selection is a replacement of the shortest hop‐count (HC) metric, and consider three factors: HC distance, intra‐MANET traffic, and inter‐MANET traffic.

Simulation results show that ad hoc routing protocols, using the proposed metric, get better performance in terms of packet delivery ratio and transmission delay, at the cost of slightly increased signalling overhead.

In the assessment, simulation results are taken from two mobility scenarios, and the hybrid metric is integrated into only reactive ad hoc routing. Thus, more case studies need to be carried out to demonstrate the outcomes of the proposed metric compared with others.

This paper provides the needed functionalities for broadening the richness of MANET applications to internet users, and vice verse.

This paper contributes to the research on internetworking and mobility management between MANETs and the internet.