Search results

This chapter more clearly identifies the distinction between Electronic Health Record (EHR) and Electronic Medical Record (EMR), and states their value in obtaining individual-level data. Synthetic medical records may be used as a surrogate for EHR data in order to ensure digital data privacy is maintained during the development of the LHS. Synthea is an open-source simulation tool available through GitHub.¹ Extensive descriptive analysis of synthesized data is provided as a foundation for the analysis in Chapter 7.

Synthetic patient data produced by Synthea was described in Chapter 6. That data is used to create a baseline for all patients, palliative patients, and deceased palliative patients. Distributions of comorbidities across the patient groups are examined and demographic characteristics. The factors used in palliative care groupings are presented with the synthesized data fields used. The size of the palliative population is again estimated to establish validity.

The area of focus is on internationalization strategies, specifically on developing suitable strategies to support an internationalization initiative of a new medical device company.

This case is designed for final year undergraduate and MBA students. It is suitable for courses of organizational management, organization theory and design, strategic management, and international business as well as international marketing.

GranuLab, a medical device company that produced the synthetic bone graft substitute GranuMaS, aspired to be a high-growth company. To achieve this aspiration the company had made plans for internationalization, which include penetrating the ASEAN, Middle East, Latin American, and African markets within the next five years. By December 2010, GranuLab had completed the construction of its new manufacturing facility in Shah Alam, about 30km from Malaysia's capital city of Kuala Lumpur. This manufacturing facility had the capability to produce high volumes to support the company's high growth plan. However, the company's internationalization processes had taken longer than expected and this has led to a low business volume. By mid-2012, the company was forced to make a quick decision as it had suffered a year and a half of operations losses. GranuLab had to formulate a strategy as to how to position GranuMaS and penetrate the targeted markets. Failure to internationalize would incur even greater losses and might hinder the achievement of its high growth aspiration by 2015.

This case is designed to stimulate case analysts' thinking into providing recommendations for the appropriate internationalization strategies to be adopted by the management team to ensure that the company could succeed in achieving its goals. The case will expose students to the concepts and theories of strategic management, international business, international entrepreneurship; and facilitate the development of students' abilities to apply those concepts in managerial situations.

Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

Data mapping from synthesized data to palliative care characteristics was the final step before the final analysis of survival. Background and foundation for Kaplan-Meier curves are provided before generating curves for the three Palliative Care Groups. Interpretations of the Kaplan-Meier curves are presented along with interpretation of the associated Hazard Curves. Three statistical hypothesis tests, completed on a pairwise basis, are used to verify that the survival curves differ by group. Patients mapped to specific groups may be further supported through advice, counseling, and other services to assist them in moving to a more advantageous care group.

Since earliest history, splintage materials have been used for immobilisation of injuries, especially fractures. The use of gypsum in this domain dates from the eleventh century and remains in common usage today. Lighter materials have been produced in an attempt to improve performance. The authors examined 180 patients comprising 90 upper limb and 90 lower limb with 30 in each of the three groups, traditional gypsum; fibreglass; and new polypropylene. The gypsum cast remains the cheapest at an average cost of £3.51 per patient compared to £7.18 for fibreglass and £7.45 for polypropylene (upper limb). However, the non‐cost advantages of the new product which were identified may make this extra expense worthwhile in selected cases.

Novel psychoactive substances (NPS) – often known as “legal highs” – are a varied group of substances that are causing concern due to their possible effects on mental health. Particular concerns have been raised about synthetic cannabinoid receptor agonists often known as “Spice”. The purpose of this paper is to identify the prevalence of NPS use and explore any association with acute psychological disturbance.

The authors reviewed the case notes for 153 admissions to a male acute inpatient ward. Prevalence of reported NPS use and admissions to psychiatric intensive care unit (PICU) were recorded.

In total, 18.9 per cent of individuals admitted to acute inpatient care were reported to have used NPS. NPS users were almost ten times as likely as their non-NPS using peers to require care in PICU. This result was statistically significant (Fisher exact test: p<0.001). Although caution is required given the limitations of this study, the data and clinical experience suggest that synthetic cannabinoids may be the specific type of NPS that is being used by this group.

Mental health professionals can expect to care for people using NPS in acute inpatient environments, and so they need to understand the nature and effects of these substances. It is possible that NPS use may be associated with sustained acute psychological disturbance.

There have been few studies on the prevalence of NPS use in inpatient environments and none of them have published that explore the association with PICU admission. Despite the limitations of this study, it has significant value by identifying an urgent need for comprehensive research in this area.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the relationship between outpatient satisfaction and the five constructs of healthcare projects’ service quality in Pakistan using Deng’s grey incidence analysis (GIA) model, absolute degree GIA model (ADGIA), a novel second synthetic degree GIA (SSDGIA) model and two approaches of decision-making under uncertainty.

The study proposes a new synthetic GIA model and demonstrates its feasibility on data (N=221) collected from both public and private sector healthcare projects of Punjab, the most populous province of Pakistan, using a self-administered questionnaire developed using the original SERVQUAL approach.

The results of decision analysis approach indicated that outpatients’ satisfaction from the private sector healthcare projects is higher as compared to the public healthcare projects’. The results from the proposed model revealed that tangibility and reliability play an important role in shaping the patient satisfaction in the public and private sectors, respectively.

The study is pioneer in evaluating a healthcare system’s service quality using grey system theory. The study proposes the SSDGIA model as a novel method to evaluate parameters comprehensively based on their mutual association (given by absolute degree of grey incidence) and inter-dependencies (given by Deng’s degree of grey incidence), and tests the new model in the given scenario. The study is novel in terms of its analysis of data and modelling. The study also proposes a comprehensive structure of the healthcare delivery system of Pakistan.