Service Innovation: the state of the art and a proposal of a research agenda

The service sector has acquired a growing importance in every country economy, which has stimulated research in the field of service innovation, a new field in management studies. This text aimed to state a research agenda upon service innovation, based on an articulated discussion of the results of several articles that compose the state of the art of this concept. 73 empirical articles were analyzed, 33% of them exploring the innovation strategies and technology; 18% of the articles describe research on economic performance and enterprise productivity; 16% are related to antecedents and determinants of innovation; another 16% about network capacity development, alliances and collaboration among organizations; 9% of the articles explore service quality, innovation taxonomy, flexible systems and regional systems of innovation; and another 8% are related to themes such as intensive knowledge, research and development. The researches were concentrated in the Engineering & Technology and Hospitality Industries, which accounted for 31% and 24% of the texts, respectively. The remaining 45% of the articles referred to sectors such as Telecommunications, Health, Retail, Financial & Insurance and Public Services. The main gaps identified in these texts refer to the difficulties on measuring service innovation, besides the small number of researches on the public sector. At the end, a research agenda in the subject is presented, including the development of a scale for orientating the innovation and identifying the determining factors of the innovation in the public environment.

A rigorous approach to facilitate and guarantee the correctness of the genetic testing management in human genome information systems

Abstract Background Recent medical and biological technology advances have stimulated the development of new testing systems that have been providing huge, varied amounts of molecular and clinical data. Growing data volumes pose significant challenges for information processing systems in research centers. Additionally, the routines of genomics laboratory are typically characterized by high parallelism in testing and constant procedure changes. Results This paper describes a formal approach to address this challenge through the implementation of a genetic testing management system applied to human genome laboratory. We introduced the Human Genome Research Center Information System (CEGH) in Brazil, a system that is able to support constant changes in human genome testing and can provide patients updated results based on the most recent and validated genetic knowledge. Our approach uses a common repository for process planning to ensure reusability, specification, instantiation, monitoring, and execution of processes, which are defined using a relational database and rigorous control flow specifications based on process algebra (ACP). The main difference between our approach and related works is that we were able to join two important aspects: 1) process scalability achieved through relational database implementation, and 2) correctness of processes using process algebra. Furthermore, the software allows end users to define genetic testing without requiring any knowledge about business process notation or process algebra. Conclusions This paper presents the CEGH information system that is a Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) based on a formal framework to support genetic testing management for Mendelian disorder studies. We have proved the feasibility and showed usability benefits of a rigorous approach that is able to specify, validate, and perform genetic testing using easy end user interfaces.

Intervenções psicoeducacionais para cuidadores de idosos com demência: uma revisão sistemática

OBJETIVO: Identificar modelos de intervenções psicoeducacionais e os seus efeitos em cuidadores de idosos com demência. MÉTODOS: Levantamento de estudos publicados entre janeiro de 2000 e abril de 2012 nas bases de dados PubMed, Web of Knowledge, Lilacs e SciELO, utilizando as seguintes palavras-chave "psychoeducational and caregiver", "cuidador e demência e psicoeducação" e "cuidador e intervenção". Apenas os artigos que denominavam a intervenção estudada como psicoeducação fazem parte do presente estudo. RESULTADOS: Foram encontrados 27 artigos com relatos acerca do impacto de intervenções psicoeducacionais em cuidadores de idosos com demência. Os resultados mais prevalentes desses estudos são: melhora do bem-estar dos cuidadores (37% dos estudos); aumento do uso de estratégias de enfrentamento (30%); diminuição de pensamentos disfuncionais (30%); aumento do conhecimento sobre os serviços disponíveis (19%); melhora da autoeficácia (15%); e aumento de habilidades para o cuidado (11%). A abordagem psicoeducacional descrita nos estudos é do âmbito informativo, cognitivo-comportamental, com técnicas de gerenciamento de estresse e de emoções; técnicas de resolução de problemas e apoio emocional. CONCLUSÃO: A intervenção psicoeducacional contribui significativamente para a melhora do bem-estar do cuidador, contudo ainda é necessária uma padronização dessa abordagem, em termos de estrutura, duração e conteúdos ministrados, para que haja evidências mais precisas do efeito desse tipo de intervenção.