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The purpose of this paper is to assess the performance measurement in the UK NHS ambulance service documenting various unintended consequences of the current performance framework and to suggest a future research agenda.

The paper reviews the literature on ambulance performance targets and documents several unintended consequences of the current performance system through an in‐depth case study analysis based on interviews with Trust staff and policy experts along with observation of performance review meetings in the chosen Trust. Ethical approval for the study was obtained from a local NHS research ethics committee.

Significant unintended consequences of the ambulance performance targets based on response times have been systematically documented, which are likely to put the target under spotlight, especially that of the eight‐minute response. The current policy focus to reform the eight‐minute target by making it more stringent has the potential of jeopardising the reform agenda based on developing clinical skills of the paramedics and introducing clinical management in the service.

The paper makes an objective assessment of the sustainability of the current policy framework and identifies future lines of enquiry for further research.

This paper makes an original contribution in identifying and documenting the disjuncture between stated and unintended consequences of ambulance performance measurement, which will be of value to academics, practitioners and policy makers.

This study examines the impact of response time on user experience for mobile applications and considers the moderating influence of gender and network environment on this relationship.

An experiment was conducted with 50 young adults to evaluate their user experience of a mobile application that simulates variations in network environment and response time. User experience was evaluated based on the three constituent dimensions of tolerance, acceptance, and satisfaction.

Analytical results demonstrate that response time not only adversely affects user experience of mobile applications, but that this effect is not homogeneous across the three dimensions of tolerance, acceptance and satisfaction. The findings also illustrate that gender moderates the effect of response time on user experience, however, the negative influence is more salient for males than females, which is opposite to our hypothesis. The joint moderating influence of gender and network environment turned out to be partly significant.

By illuminating users' tolerance, acceptance, and satisfaction with varied response times, findings from this study can inform the design of mobile applications such that desired levels of user experience can be assured with minimum resources.

Although response time has been hailed as a key determinant of user experience for desktop applications, there is a paucity of studies that have investigated the impact of response time on user experience for mobile applications. Furthermore, prior research on response time neglects the multi-dimensional nature of user experience. This study bridges the above mentioned knowledge gaps by delineating user experience into its constituent dimensions and clarifying the effects of response time on each of these dimensions.

As the intensity of natural disasters increases, there is a need to develop policies and procedures to assist various agencies with moving aid to affected areas. One of the biggest limitations to this process is damage to transportation networks, in particular waterways. To keep waterways safe, aids to navigation (ATONs) are placed in various areas to guide mariners and ships to their final destination. If the ATONs are damaged, then the waterways are left unsafe, making it difficult to move supplies and recover from a disaster. The aim of this paper is to explore the effectiveness of pre‐positioning strategies for port recovery in response to a natural disaster.

A stochastic facility location model is presented to determine where teams and commodities should be pre‐positioned in order to maximize the number of ATONs repaired, given a constraint on response time. The first stage decisions focus on determining the location of resources. The second stage decisions consist of the distribution of supplies and teams to affected areas.

Results show the benefit of pre‐positioning and the value of coordination toward the responsiveness of restoring waterways. Furthermore, the relationship between resources, repair time, and response is characterized.

There has been extensive work addressing pre‐positioning as it relates to responding to the needs of populations affected by disasters. However, little has been done to explore pre‐positioning in the context of business recovery from severe weather events.

Sensing technology has been extensively researched and used due to its applications in industrial production and daily life. Due to inherent limitations of conventional silicon-based technology, researchers are now-a-days paying more attention to flexible electronics to design low-cost, high-sensitivity devices. This observational and analytical study aims to emphasis on carbon monoxide gas sensor. This review also focuses the challenges faced by flexible devices, offers the most recent research on paper-based gas sensors and pays special focus on various sensing materials and fabrication techniques.

To get the better insight into opportunities for future improvement, a number of research papers based on sensors were studied and realized the need to design carbon monoxide gas sensor. A number of parameters were then gone through to decide the flexibility parameter to be considered for design purposes. This review also focuses on the challenges faced by flexible devices and how they can be overcome.

It has been shown that carbon monoxide gas, being most contaminated gas, needs to be fabricated to sense low concentration at room temperature, considering flexibility as an important parameter. Regarding this parameter, some tests must be done to test whether the structure sustains or degrades after bending. The parameters required to perform bending are also described.

Due to inherent limitations of conventional silicon-based technology, now-a-days attention is paid towards flexible electronics to design low-cost, high-sensitivity devices. A number of research articles are provided in the literature concerning gas sensing for different applications using several sensing principles. This study aims to provide a comprehensive overview of recent developments in carbon monoxide gas sensors along with the design possibilities for flexible paper-based gas sensors. All the aspects have been taken into consideration for the fabrication, starting with paper characterization techniques, various sensing materials, manufacturing methodologies, challenges in the fabrication of flexible devices and effects of bending and humidity on the sensing performance.

This study is based at a police force’s communications centre which undertakes a vital role in receiving and processing emergency and non-emergency telephone calls from the public and other agencies. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate a method for addressing the conflict between the need to reduce cost and the requirement to meet national standards in terms of a timely response to customer calls.

In a two-stage methodology an activity-based costing (ABC) approach is used as a framework to show how costs are generated by the three “drivers” of cost which relate to the design efficiency of the process, the demand on the process and the cost of resources used to undertake the process. The study then provides an analysis from a resource driver perspective using discrete-event simulation to model workforce staffing scenarios.

Cost savings within the police communications centre are identified from an analysis of the three drivers of cost. Further analysis from a resource driver viewpoint using a simulation study of an alternative workforce schedule predicted an overall reduction in staffing cost of 9.4 per cent.

The study outlines an innovative method that identifies where cost can be reduced using ABC and then provides an assessment of strategies that aim to reduce cost whilst maintaining service levels in a police operation using simulation.

Audit firms face a constant conflict between the business of auditing and the profession of auditing, which is manifested at audit senior level in the pressure to perform quality work within specified time limits. Prior quantitative studies have reported high levels of quality‐threatening behaviour (QTB) at senior level and the importance of examining contributory factors has been highlighted. Semi‐structured interviews were conducted with audit seniors in four of the (then) Big Five firms and findings suggest that key variables (time pressure, participative target setting, and style of performance evaluation) have been inadequately operationalised in previous studies and that two distinct forms of QTB exist: deliberate and inadvertent. Propositions are developed for variables associated with both forms of QTB, which provide direction and focus for future research.

This conceptual paper seeks to consider the impact of performance measurement and reporting based around performance indicators and targets within the public sector and to identify that the response to indicators and targets is often gaming which happens at organisational level. It then goes on to present a definition and typology of organisational gaming.

The paper draws from a range of documents both government and academic to identify both the process of, and the types of, organisational gaming.

The paper finds that organisational gaming occurs at both different levels (low and high) and extent (internal and external). It builds on this by presenting a framework (2 × 2 matrix) which presents types of organisational gaming which range in their degree of impact and consequence.

The concepts within this paper focus around public services on which the framework is built. This may – but it is doubtful – have limitations when considering the ideas within private sector organisations. Another limitation could be levelled at the 2 × 2 typology in that it may be difficult to place a gaming phenomenon into one “box” alone.

The value in the paper and the framework is that a distinction between measurement and reporting is drawn together with identification of a different gaming phenomenon. This, the paper argues, is important to understand, if organisations are to avoid some of the more “dangerous” or high impact consequences of gaming.

The lack of studies about the response time of emergency medical service during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in a dense city of a developing country has triggered this study to explore the factors contributing to a high response time of ambulance service to reach patients in need. An evaluation of contributing factors to the response time is necessary to guide decision-makers in keeping a high service level of emergency medical service.

This research employed an agent-based modeling approach with input parameters from interviews with emergency medical service staff in Bandung city, Indonesia. The agent-based model is established to evaluate the relevant contribution of the factors to response time reduction using several scenarios.

According to agent-based simulation, four factors contribute to the response time: the process of preparing crew and ambulance during the pandemic, coverage area, traffic density and crew responsiveness. Among these factors, the preparation process during the pandemic and coverage area significantly contributed to the response time, while the traffic density and crew responsiveness were less significant. The preparation process is closely related to the safety procedure in handling patients during the COVID-19 pandemic and normal time. The recommended coverage area for maintaining a low response time is 5 km, equivalent to six local subdistricts.

This study has explored the factors contributing to emergency medical response time. The insignificant contribution of the traffic density showed that citizens, in general, have high awareness and compliance to traffic priority regulation, so crew responsiveness in handling ambulances is an irrelevant factor. This study might have different contributing factors for less dense population areas and focuses on public emergency medical services provided by the local government.

The local government must provide additional funding to cover additional investment for ambulance, crew and administration for the new emergency service deployment point. Exercising an efficient process in ambulance and crew preparation is mandatory for each emergency deployment point.

This study evaluates the contributing factors of emergency medical response time in the pandemic and normal situation by qualitative analysis and agent-based simulation. The performance comparison in terms of medical response time before and after COVID-19 through agent-based simulation is valuable for decision-makers to reduce the impact of COVID-19.

Complaints are an integral element of the quality control and clinical governance process of UK ambulance services, and form a valid and reliable way of identifying areas of practice that require improvement. The purpose of this paper is to assess to what extent such complaints and their possible causes are researched; to identify any possible areas of practice requiring further investigation.

A computerised literature search was conducted using the online databases Science Direct, Cochrane library, and Web of Science, as well as specific searches of the Journal of Paramedic Practice and the International Journal of Paramedic Practice database. Online databases were searched for peer-reviewed full research articles between January 2012 and May 2016.

A total of 125 papers were identified and after further screening 90 articles were excluded. Additional screening using the critical appraisal skills programme (2014) criterions excluded a further 21 papers, leaving 14 studies for inclusion within the review.

This review found no specific research focussing on any causes of complaints made to UK ambulance services. Moreover, no research was identified specifically investigating the top three cited themes of complaints made in the last three years. More research is required both in researching those themes of complaints already known but also determining any other possible causes of complaints made. This review has evidenced that studies investigating response times improvement strategies, ambulance staff attitudes, and educational assessments of errors, all have findings which are meaningful and valid to determining the possible causes of complaints and possible improvement strategies. Ambulance services, commissioners, practitioners, and clinical academics should endeavour to research and share causes of complaints made to improve the quality of patient care.

This paper aims to develop a signal acquisition system of surface electromyography (sEMG) and use the characteristics of (sEMG) signal to interference action pattern.

This paper proposes a fusion method based on combining the coefficient of AR model and wavelet coefficient. It improves the recognition rate of the target action. To overcome the slow convergence speed and local optimum in standard BP network, the study presents a BP algorithm which combine with LM algorithm and PSO algorithm, and it improves the convergence speed and the recognition rate of the target action.

Experiments verify the effectiveness of the system from two aspects the target motion recognition rate and the corresponding reaction speed of the robotic system.

The study developed a signal acquisition system of sEMG and used the characteristics of (sEMG) signal to interference action pattern. The myoelectricity integral values are presented to determine the starting point and end point of target movement, which is more effective than using single sample point amplitude method.