A collaborative approach to home care delivery for older clients: Perspectives of home care providers

A collaborative approach to home care (HC) delivery for older clients has taken centre stage (Nies, 2006). In Finland, public home help and home health care services have been combined to form the home care unit, whose goal is to provide a collaborative approach to care delivery through cooperation and sharing of responsibilities. In this model, the general practitioner (GP), home care nurses (HCN) and home help workers (HHW) care for shared clients. GPs and HCNs provide health care, such as monitoring of clients’ health status, and HHWs assist with personal care tasks such as dressing, washing and meal preparation. As the needs of older clients are multiple, collaboration is needed as one professional group cannot take sole responsibility (Nies, 2006). This paper reports on a study undertaken to examine home care unit care providers’ perspectives of the collaborative approach to HC delivery for older clients.

Marketing VM services to achieve competitive advantage in the Malaysian Construction Sector

Value Management (VM) has been proven to provide a structured framework, together with supporting tools and techniques that facilitate effective decision-making in many types of projects, thus achieving ‘best value’ for clients. It is identified at International level as a natural career progression for the construction service provider and as an opportunity in developing leading-edge skills. The services offered by contractors and consultants in the construction sector have been expanding. In an increasingly competitive and global marketplace, firms are seeking ways to differentiate their services to ever more knowledgeable and demanding clients. The traditional demarcations have given way, and the old definition of what contractors, designers, engineers and quantity surveyors can, and cannot do in terms of their market offering has changed. Project management, design and cost and safety consultancy services, are being delivered by a diverse range of suppliers. Value management services have been developing in various sectors in industry; from manufacturing to the military and now construction. Given the growing evidence that VM has been successful in delivering value-for-money to the client, VM would appear to be gaining some momentum as an essential management tool in the Malaysian construction sector. The recently issued VM Circular 3/2009 by the Economic Planning Unit Malaysia (EPU) possibly marks a new beginning in public sector client acceptance on the strength of VM in construction. This paper therefore attempts to study the prospects of marketing the benefits of VM by construction service providers, and how it may provide an edge in an increasingly competitive Malaysian construction industry.

Implementing an emergency department patient admission predictive tool : insights from practice

Purpose: This paper aims to show that identification of expectations and software functional requirements via consultation with potential users is an integral component of the development of an emergency department patient admissions prediction tool. ---------- Design/methodology/approach: Thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with 14 key health staff delivered rich data regarding existing practice and future needs. Participants included emergency department staff, bed managers, nurse unit managers, directors of nursing, and personnel from health administration. ---------- Findings: Participants contributed contextual insights on the current system of admissions, revealing a culture of crisis, imbued with misplayed communication. Their expectations and requirements of a potential predictive tool provided strategic data that moderated the development of the Emergency Department Patient Admissions Prediction Tool, based on their insistence that it feature availability, reliability and relevance. In order to deliver these stipulations, participants stressed that it should be incorporated, validated, defined and timely. ---------- Research limitations/implications: Participants were envisaging a concept and use of a tool that was somewhat hypothetical. However, further research will evaluate the tool in practice. ---------- Practical implications: Participants' unsolicited recommendations regarding implementation will not only inform a subsequent phase of the tool evaluation, but are eminently applicable to any process of implementation in a healthcare setting. ---------- Originality/value: The consultative process engaged clinicians and the paper delivers an insider view of an overburdened system, rather than an outsider's observations.

Analyzing requirements and approaches for sourcing software based services

Increasingly, software is no longer developed as a single system, but rather as a smart combination of so-called software services. Each of these provides an independent, specific and relatively small piece of functionality, which is typically accessible through the Internet from internal or external service providers. To the best of our knowledge, there are no standards or models that describe the sourcing process of these software based services (SBS). We identify the sourcing requirements for SBS and associate the key characteristics of SBS (with the sourcing requirements introduced). Furthermore, we investigate the sourcing of SBS with the related works in the field of classical procurement, business process outsourcing, and information systems sourcing. Based on the analysis, we conclude that the direct adoption of these approaches for SBS is not feasible and new approaches are required for sourcing SBS.

Analyzing requirements and approaches for sourcing software based services

Increasingly, software is no longer developed as a single system, but rather as a smart combination of so-called software services. Each of these provides an independent, specific and relatively small piece of functionality, which is typically accessible through the Internet from internal or external service providers. There are no standards or models that describe the sourcing process of these software based services (SBS). The authors identify the sourcing requirements for SBS and associate the key characteristics of SBS (with the sourcing requirements introduced). Furthermore, this paper investigates the sourcing of SBS with the related works in the field of classical procurement, business process outsourcing, and information systems sourcing. Based on the analysis, the authors conclude that the direct adoption of these approaches for SBS is not feasible and new approaches are required for sourcing SBS.

Efficient algorithm for achieving GWPMM fairness in ATM ABR services

A new explicit rate allocation algorithm is proposed for achieving generic weight-proportional max-min (GWPMM) fairness in asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) available bit rate services. This algorithm scales well with a fixed computational complexity of O(1) and can realise GWPMM fair rate allocation in an ATM network accurately.