Talking about quality: exploring how ‘quality’ is conceptualized in European hospitals and healthcare systems

BACKGROUND: Conceptualization of quality of care - in terms of what individuals, groups and organizations include in their meaning of quality, is an unexplored research area. It is important to understand how quality is conceptualised as a means to successfully implement improvement efforts and bridge potential disconnect in language about quality between system levels, professions, and clinical services. The aim is therefore to explore and compare conceptualization of quality among national bodies (macro level), senior hospital managers (meso level), and professional groups within clinical micro systems (micro level) in a cross-national study. METHODS: This cross-national multi-level case study combines analysis of national policy documents and regulations at the macro level with semi-structured interviews (383) and non-participant observation (803 hours) of key meetings and shadowing of staff at the meso and micro levels in ten purposively sampled European hospitals (England, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden, and Norway). Fieldwork at the meso and micro levels was undertaken over a 12-month period (2011-2012) and different types of micro systems were included (maternity, oncology, orthopaedics, elderly care, intensive care, and geriatrics). RESULTS: The three quality dimensions clinical effectiveness, patient safety, and patient experience were incorporated in macro level policies in all countries. Senior hospital managers adopted a similar conceptualization, but also included efficiency and costs in their conceptualization of quality. 'Quality' in the forms of measuring indicators and performance management were dominant among senior hospital managers (with clinical and non-clinical background). The differential emphasis on the three quality dimensions was strongly linked to professional roles, personal ideas, and beliefs at the micro level. Clinical effectiveness was dominant among physicians (evidence-based approach), while patient experience was dominant among nurses (patient-centered care, enough time to talk with patients). Conceptualization varied between micro systems depending on the type of services provided. CONCLUSION: The quality conceptualization differed across system levels (macro-meso-micro), among professional groups (nurses, doctors, managers), and between the studied micro systems in our ten sampled European hospitals. This entails a managerial alignment challenge translating macro level quality definitions into different local contexts.

The ZMET Technique: A New Paradigm for Improving Marketing and Marketing Research

For decades, marketing and marketing research have been based on a concept of consumer behaviour that is deeply embedded in a linear notion of marketing activities. With increasing regularity, key organising frameworks for marketing and marketing activities are being challenged by academics and practitioners alike. In turn, this has led to the search for new approaches and tools that will help marketers understand the interaction among attitudes, emotions and product/brand choice. More recently, the approach developed by Harvard Professor, Gerald Zaltman, referred to as the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET) has gained considerable interest. This paper seeks to demonstrate the effectiveness of this alternative qualitative method, using a non-conventional approach, thus providing a useful contribution to the qualitative research area.

Public participation, values and interests in the procurement of infrastructure projects in Australia : a review and future research direction

In many countries, the main providers for major infrastructure projects are government or public agencies. Public infrastructure projects includes economic and social infrastructure such as transportation, education and health facilities. Most decision-making models for delivery of public infrastructure projects are heavily weighted towards financial/economic factors. In Australia, public participation is an essential instrument in the procurement of infrastructure and development within Australia. This study reviews the public participation, values and interests in the procurement of infrastructure projects in Australia, and identifies the research direction in this research area in order to improve the decision-making models that capture stakeholder social, economical and environmental concerns in infrastructure projects.

Some reflection of research 'Schools' and geographies

Reflecting on real and perceived differences between European and North American research cultures, I challenge views that ‘European’ research is under appreciated or discriminated against, and caution against isolationist European positions. Instead, I argue that although no distinctive and coherent European tradition or culture really exists, there may be elements of the prevalent research culture that can be turned into an advantage for Europe-based and/or European-trained researchers in helping to influence and improve one, global research conversation. Of course, a range of sub-communities and sub-conversations will and should exist, but there is no reason for these to be based on geography.

Cloud computing for healthcare research information sharing

With the widespread application of healthcare Information and Communication Technology (ICT), constructing a stable and sustainable data sharing circumstance has attracted rapidly growing attention in both academic research area and healthcare industry. Cloud computing is one of long dreamed visions of Healthcare Cloud (HC), which matches the need of healthcare information sharing directly to various health providers over the Internet, regardless of their location and the amount of data. In this paper, we discuss important research tool related to health information sharing and integration in HC and investigate the arising challenges and issues. We describe many potential solutions to provide more opportunities to implement EHR cloud. As well, we introduce the development of a HC related collaborative healthcare research example, thus illustrating the prospective of applying Cloud Computing in the health information science research.

The role of design in the future of digital channels: Conceptual insights and future research directions

Purpose In the past channel literature has looked to other disciplines in developing and refining their theories, models and methods in order to evolve the field. This paper traces such history and highlights the substantial changes caused by the digital age. In light of this, the inclusion of design theory into future channel management is presented to overcome existing concerns. Design/methodology/approach A comprehensive review of literature on the history of channels, the emotional experience (people), limitations of digital innovation (technology) and the role of design (business) has been conducted to create a new approach, built upon the theory of the techno-economic innovation model. Findings The findings of this study propose design-led channel management as a new research area, providing novel research questions and future research directions. The inclusion of design and emotion theories indicates that the future of digital channel design requires a deeper understanding of customers and needs to go beyond technological advances. Theoretical implications The findings provide an opportunity to explore dynamic theories and methodologies within the field of design that will broaden the horizons and challenge existing notions in channel literature. Originality/value This paper is the first paper that introduces the theory of Emotionate, as the next evolution of channel literature. The value of Emotionate lies in providing a new design-led process of integrating emotion to provide advice to practitioners as well as identifies research areas for academia, thereby extending the reach and richness of this emerging research field.

Transdisciplinary collaboration in wound care research

The highly complex disorder of chronic wounds is a significant problem. Information is often lacking, dynamically changing, or contradictory and thus acts to impede the progression of research and its translation into clinical care. Transdisciplinary collaboration may play an important role in chronic wound research, permitting key stakeholders with a single, central goal to take a unified approach towards addressing the problem. While transdisciplinary collaboration is not a new concept, its implementation within chronic wound research is relatively new. This is because the research area is still largely dominated by single-discipline researchers or by multiple disciplines working in isolation. Transdisciplinary research is a transcending approach, requiring a greater level of understanding between disciplines and may represent the next leap forward in wound care research. This approach necessitates a deeper understanding by all team members of the co-disciplines involved; where key stakeholders are better equipped to respond to dynamic changes and problems that arise in chronic wound research. In this paper, we illustrate what a transdisciplinary approach in wound care research may entail, with the ultimate goal of such an undertaking to improve understanding of the complexities of wound care, which could lead to potential benefits in wound management.

Exploring Semantic Textual Similarity

[EN]Measuring semantic similarity and relatedness between textual items (words, sentences, paragraphs or even documents) is a very important research area in Natural Language Processing (NLP). In fact, it has many practical applications in other NLP tasks. For instance, Word Sense Disambiguation, Textual Entailment, Paraphrase detection, Machine Translation, Summarization and other related tasks such as Information Retrieval or Question Answering. In this masther thesis we study di erent approaches to compute the semantic similarity between textual items. In the framework of the european PATHS project1, we also evaluate a knowledge-base method on a dataset of cultural item descriptions. Additionaly, we describe the work carried out for the Semantic Textual Similarity (STS) shared task of SemEval-2012. This work has involved supporting the creation of datasets for similarity tasks, as well as the organization of the task itself.

Research progress on noble metal composite nanoparticles

Noble metal composite nanoparticles, as attractive building blocks of advanced functional materials, have received enormous attentions due to their specific optical, electronic and catalytic properties that are distant from those of the corresponding monometal nanoparticles. Such materials have important applications in such areas as sensors, optical materials, catalysis and biology, and developed into an increasingly important research area in nanomaterials science. This article reviews the recent progress in the synthesis, properties, and applications of noble metal composite nanoparticles with core-shell, heterostructure, and alloy structure.

Anti-cyclonic eddies northwest of Luzon in summer-fall observed by satellite altimeters

Anti-cyclonic eddies northwest of Luzon of the Philippines in summer-fall are identified in the merged data products of satellite altimeters of Topex/Poseidon, Jason-1 and European Research Satellites. The generation and propagation of the anti-cyclonic eddies, which are confirmed by satellite ocean color data, are found to be a seasonal phenomenon that is phase-locked to the onset of the southwesterly monsoon and the relaxation of the cyclonic wind curl in the northeastern South China Sea. The eddies originate from northwest of Luzon in summer, move across the northeastern South China Sea to reach the China continental slope in fall, and propagate southwestward along the continental slope in fall-winter, inducing shelfbreak current variations in the western South China Sea in fall-winter. The anti-cyclonic eddy discovered by Li et al. (1998) in the northern South China Sea is found to originate from northwest of Luzon and carry primarily the South China Sea waters. It does not appear to be an eddy shed from the Kuroshio in the Luzon Strait area as alluded by Li et al. (1998) and others.

Towards the sustainable use of Europe’s forests: a centre for European forest science! – Some missing catalytic elements?

The Symposium, “Towards the sustainable use of Europe’s forests”, with sub-title “Forest ecosystem and landscape research: scientific challenges and opportunities” lists three fundamental substantive areas of research that are involved: Forest management and practices, Ecosystem processes and functional ecology, and Environmental economics and sociology. This paper argues that there are essential catalytic elements missing! Without these elements there is great danger that the aimed-for world leadership in the forest sciences will not materialize. What are the missing elements? All the sciences, and in particular biology, environmental sciences, sociology, economics, and forestry have evolved so that they include good scientific methodology. Good methodology is imperative in both the design and analysis of research studies, the management of research data, and in the interpretation of research finding. The methodological disciplines of Statistics, Modelling and Informatics (“SMI”) are crucial elements in a proposed Centre of European Forest Science, and the full involvement of professionals in these methodological disciplines is needed if the research of the Centre is to be world-class. Distributed Virtual Institute (DVI) for Statistics, Modelling and Informatics in Forestry and the Environment (SMIFE) is a consortium with the aim of providing world-class methodological support and collaboration to European research in the areas of Forestry and the Environment. It is suggested that DVI: SMIFE should be a formal partner in the proposed Centre for European Forest Science.

ICES and PICES Strategies for Coordinating Research on the Impacts of Climate Change on Marine Ecosystems

The social, economic, and ecological consequences of projected climate change on fish and fisheries are issues of global concern. In 2012, the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) and the North Pacific Marine Science Organization (PICES) established a Strategic Initiative on Climate Change Effects on Marine Ecosystems (SICCME) to synthesize and to promote innovative, credible, and objective science-based advice on the impacts of climate change on marine ecosystems in the Northern Hemisphere. SICCME takes advantage of the unique and complementary strengths of the two organizations to develop a research initiative that focuses on their shared interests. A phased implementation will ensure that SICCME will be responsive to a rapidly evolving research area while delivering ongoing syntheses of existing knowledge, thereby advancing new science and methodologies and communicating new insights at each phase.

WS-PGRADE/gUSE in European Projects

Besides core project partners, the SCI-BUS project also supported several external user communities in developing and setting up customized science gateways. The focus was on large communities typically represented by other European research projects. However, smaller local efforts with the potential of generalizing the solution to wider communities were also supported. This chapter gives an overview of support activities related to user communities external to the SCI-BUS project. A generic overview of such activities is provided followed by the detailed description of three gateways developed in collaboration with European projects: the agINFRA Science Gateway for Workflows for agricultural research, the VERCE Science Gateway for seismology, and the DRIHM Science Gateway for weather research and forecasting.

Consent in Pharmacogenomic research

This article analyzes the emerging ethical and legal requirements for informed consent in pharmacogenomic research. It reviews how policies at the international, regional and national levels have responded to the ethical challenges raised by this new research area. It concludes that the pharmacogenomic policy framework is still in its infancy and needs to be further developed to answer the challenges raised by this important discipline.

Framework for middleware executed on mobile devices

Die ubiquitäre Datenverarbeitung ist ein attraktives Forschungsgebiet des vergangenen und aktuellen Jahrzehnts. Es handelt von unaufdringlicher Unterstützung von Menschen in ihren alltäglichen Aufgaben durch Rechner. Diese Unterstützung wird durch die Allgegenwärtigkeit von Rechnern ermöglicht die sich spontan zu verteilten Kommunikationsnetzwerken zusammen finden, um Informationen auszutauschen und zu verarbeiten. Umgebende Intelligenz ist eine Anwendung der ubiquitären Datenverarbeitung und eine strategische Forschungsrichtung der Information Society Technology der Europäischen Union. Das Ziel der umbebenden Intelligenz ist komfortableres und sichereres Leben. Verteilte Kommunikationsnetzwerke für die ubiquitäre Datenverarbeitung charakterisieren sich durch Heterogenität der verwendeten Rechner. Diese reichen von Kleinstrechnern, eingebettet in Gegenstände des täglichen Gebrauchs, bis hin zu leistungsfähigen Großrechnern. Die Rechner verbinden sich spontan über kabellose Netzwerktechnologien wie wireless local area networks (WLAN), Bluetooth, oder UMTS. Die Heterogenität verkompliziert die Entwicklung und den Aufbau von verteilten Kommunikationsnetzwerken. Middleware ist eine Software Technologie um Komplexität durch Abstraktion zu einer homogenen Schicht zu reduzieren. Middleware bietet eine einheitliche Sicht auf die durch sie abstrahierten Ressourcen, Funktionalitäten, und Rechner. Verteilte Kommunikationsnetzwerke für die ubiquitäre Datenverarbeitung sind durch die spontane Verbindung von Rechnern gekennzeichnet. Klassische Middleware geht davon aus, dass Rechner dauerhaft miteinander in Kommunikationsbeziehungen stehen. Das Konzept der dienstorienterten Architektur ermöglicht die Entwicklung von Middleware die auch spontane Verbindungen zwischen Rechnern erlaubt. Die Funktionalität von Middleware ist dabei durch Dienste realisiert, die unabhängige Software-Einheiten darstellen. Das Wireless World Research Forum beschreibt Dienste die zukünftige Middleware beinhalten sollte. Diese Dienste werden von einer Ausführungsumgebung beherbergt. Jedoch gibt es noch keine Definitionen wie sich eine solche Ausführungsumgebung ausprägen und welchen Funktionsumfang sie haben muss. Diese Arbeit trägt zu Aspekten der Middleware-Entwicklung für verteilte Kommunikationsnetzwerke in der ubiquitären Datenverarbeitung bei. Der Schwerpunkt liegt auf Middleware und Grundlagentechnologien. Die Beiträge liegen als Konzepte und Ideen für die Entwicklung von Middleware vor. Sie decken die Bereiche Dienstfindung, Dienstaktualisierung, sowie Verträge zwischen Diensten ab. Sie sind in einem Rahmenwerk bereit gestellt, welches auf die Entwicklung von Middleware optimiert ist. Dieses Rahmenwerk, Framework for Applications in Mobile Environments (FAME²) genannt, beinhaltet Richtlinien, eine Definition einer Ausführungsumgebung, sowie Unterstützung für verschiedene Zugriffskontrollmechanismen um Middleware vor unerlaubter Benutzung zu schützen. Das Leistungsspektrum der Ausführungsumgebung von FAME² umfasst: • minimale Ressourcenbenutzung, um auch auf Rechnern mit wenigen Ressourcen, wie z.B. Mobiltelefone und Kleinstrechnern, nutzbar zu sein • Unterstützung für die Anpassung von Middleware durch Änderung der enthaltenen Dienste während die Middleware ausgeführt wird • eine offene Schnittstelle um praktisch jede existierende Lösung für das Finden von Diensten zu verwenden • und eine Möglichkeit der Aktualisierung von Diensten zu deren Laufzeit um damit Fehlerbereinigende, optimierende, und anpassende Wartungsarbeiten an Diensten durchführen zu können Eine begleitende Arbeit ist das Extensible Constraint Framework (ECF), welches Design by Contract (DbC) im Rahmen von FAME² nutzbar macht. DbC ist eine Technologie um Verträge zwischen Diensten zu formulieren und damit die Qualität von Software zu erhöhen. ECF erlaubt das aushandeln sowie die Optimierung von solchen Verträgen.