A mobile health care rule-based system

The relation between patient and physician in most modern Health Care Sys- tems is sparse, limited in time and very in exible. On the other hand, and in contradiction with several recent studies, most physicians do not rely their patient diagnostics evaluations on intertwined psychological and social nature factors. Facing these problems and trying to improve the patient/physician relation we present a mobile health care solution to im- prove the interaction between the physician and his patients. The solution serves not only as a privileged mean of communication between physicians and patients but also as an evolutionary intelligent platform delivering a mobile rule based system.

A mobile systems interface protocol

Recent progresses in the software development world has assisted a change in hardware from heavy mainframes and desktop machines to unimaginable small devices leading to the prophetic "third computing paradigm", Ubiquitous Computing. Still, this novel unnoticeable devices lack in various capabilities, like computing power, storage capacity and human interface. Connectivity associated to this devices is also considered an handicap which comes generally associated expensive and limited protocols like GSM and UMTS. Considering this scenario as background, this paper presents a minimal communication protocol introducing better interfaces for limited devices. Special attention has been paid to the limitations of connectivity, storage capacity and scalability of the developed software applications. Illustrating this new protocol, a case-study is presented addressing car sensors communicating with a central

The use of quantitative performance information by local elected politicians in top managers’ performance evaluation: case studies

This paper studies the use of results oriented performance information (outputs and outcomes) by local elected politicians (aldermen) in top managers’ performance evaluation. The main goal is to understand the top managers’ performance evaluation process conducted by Portuguese aldermen and to identify the dominant evaluation style. In line with Bogt (2001), an exploratory field research was developed in three large municipalities: Porto, Braga and Matosinhos. We intend to answer the following research questions: to what extent are local politicians (aldermen) 1 using results information (about outputs and outcomes) to evaluate top managers’ performance? Do aldermen give any importance to quantitative output information and report them on current planning and control documents? Will the output performance information be used on performance evaluation in a different way concerning policy field (task orientation)? Based on the Hopwood evaluation styles (adapted from the private to the public sector by Bogt, 2001), we have found that the performance evaluation process of top managers is more featured by the ‘operations-conscious styles’ (or ‘implicit style’). Portuguese aldermen recognize the importance to quantify outputs and outcomes, but these days they focus on the information about activities and the realized operations when they evaluate performance. We haven´t found significant differences between different tasks (some exceptions for culture and environment areas). However, the municipality of Matosinhos paid more attention on quantitative performance information. This finding is reinforced by the quality of quantitative data on outputs reported on its management report. Generally speaking, aldermen are aware that more attention should be paid to quantitative information about results and performance, taking into account recent reforms introduced in Portuguese municipalities (PLG) on this field, but the ‘implicit’ style is dominant.