Search results

The focus of this paper is in Q-Lasso introduced in Alghamdi et al. (2013) which extended the Lasso by Tibshirani (1996). The closed convex subset Q belonging in a Euclidean m-space, for m∈IN, is the set of errors when linear measurements are taken to recover a signal/image via the Lasso. Based on a recent work by Wang (2013), we are interested in two new penalty methods for Q-Lasso relying on two types of difference of convex functions (DC for short) programming where the DC objective functions are the difference of l1 and lσq norms and the difference of l1 and lr norms with r>1. By means of a generalized q-term shrinkage operator upon the special structure of lσq norm, we design a proximal gradient algorithm for handling the DC l1−lσq model. Then, based on the majorization scheme, we develop a majorized penalty algorithm for the DC l1−lr model. The convergence results of our new algorithms are presented as well. We would like to emphasize that extensive simulation results in the case Q={b} show that these two new algorithms offer improved signal recovery performance and require reduced computational effort relative to state-of-the-art l1 and lp (p∈(0,1)) models, see Wang (2013). We also devise two DC Algorithms on the spirit of a paper where exact DC representation of the cardinality constraint is investigated and which also used the largest-q norm of lσq and presented numerical results that show the efficiency of our DC Algorithm in comparison with other methods using other penalty terms in the context of quadratic programing, see Jun-ya et al. (2017).

The purpose of this study is twofold: exploring new queue-based variables enabled by process mining and evaluating their impact on the accuracy of waiting time prediction. Such queue-based predictors that capture the current state of the emergency department (ED) may lead to a significant improvement in the accuracy of the prediction models.

Alongside the traditional variables influencing ED waiting time, the authors developed new queue-based predictors exploiting process mining. Process mining techniques allowed the authors to discover the actual patient-flow and derive information about the crowding level of the activities. The proposed predictors were evaluated using linear and nonlinear learning techniques. The authors used real data from an ED.

As expected, the main results show that integrating the set of predictors with queue-based variables significantly improves the accuracy of waiting time prediction. Specifically, mean square error values were reduced by about 22 and 23 per cent by applying linear and nonlinear learning techniques, respectively.

Accurate estimates of waiting time can enable the ED systems to prevent overcrowding e.g. improving the routing of patients in EDs and managing more efficiently the resources. Providing accurate waiting time information also can lead to decreased patients’ dissatisfaction and elopement.

The novelty of the study relies on the attempt to derive queue-based variables reporting the crowding level of the activities within the ED through process mining techniques. Such information is often unavailable or particularly difficult to extract automatically, due to the characteristics of ED processes.