Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Strategy (PDF 383 KB)

The Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Vision Statement, issued for consultation in July 2001, describes a long-term vision for the use of ICT in the Health and Personal Social Services (HPSS). Responses to the consultation strongly supported the Strategy Vision. The ICT Strategy for the HPSS is aimed at delivering the Vision. It is based on analysis of the current use of ICT in the service and consultation with service users, those directly involved in health and social care, and the Department for Health, Personal Social Services and Public Safety (DHSSPS / the Department). Developments under way and planned elsewhere, particularly in England, Scotland, Wales and the Republic of Ireland, have been reviewed. Suppliers of ICT products and services were invited to present their perspectives on the future of ICT in health and social care. åÊ

Information and Communications Technology Strategy - for Consultation: Management Summary (PDF 75 KB)

Management Summary - June 2002

Adoption Legislation Consultation - Discussion Paper

Adoption Legislation Consultation РDiscussion Paper This discussion paper is part of a fundamental review of Irish adoption policy and practice referred to in the Minister for Children̢?Ts foreword. The purpose of the review is to give organisations and individuals with an interest in adoption law and practice an opportunity to contribute to the development of a modern adoption system characterised by clarity, consistency and fairness. Click here to download PDF 104kb

Adoption Legislation Consultation - Discussion Paper

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Towards a Standardised Framework for Inter-Country Adoption - Report of the Implementation Group

The report contains Background to the commissioning of the Report â?~â?~Towards a Standardised Framework for Intercountry Adoption Assessment Proceduresâ?Tâ?T; the Government decision arising; and the principal findings and recommendations of the Report (Chapter 1); Detailed information on progress made in relation to the recommendations contained in the Report (Chapters 2-5); Statistical data in relation to intercountry adoption services at June, 2000 (Chapter 6); A summary of key findings of the Implementation Group (Chapter 7); and The Implementation Groupâ?Ts recommendations regarding the future of intercountry adoption services (Chapter 8). Download the Report here

Towards a Standardised Framework for Inter-Country Adoption - Assessment Procedures

In the first part the background on inter-country adoption and assessment of prospective adopters are considered in general terms in Chapters Two and Three respectively. The second chapter places the objectives of the research into context. Due to the declining numbers of children being put forward for domestic adoption, there is increasing recourse to inter-country adoption. An overview of the situation is outlined. The legislation section outlines both Irish legislation and the pivotal international agreement relevant to inter-country adoption, namely the Hague Convention. The implications for inter-country adoption processes are described Download the Report here

Adoption legislation: 2003 consultation and proposals for change

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Conceptual models for designing information systems supporting the strategic analysis of technology environments

1 6 STRUCTURE OF THIS THESIS -Chapter I presents the motivations of this dissertation by illustrating two gaps in the current body of knowledge that are worth filling, describes the research problem addressed by this thesis and presents the research methodology used to achieve this goal. -Chapter 2 shows a review of the existing literature showing that environment analysis is a vital strategic task, that it shall be supported by adapted information systems, and that there is thus a need for developing a conceptual model of the environment that provides a reference framework for better integrating the various existing methods and a more formal definition of the various aspect to support the development of suitable tools. -Chapter 3 proposes a conceptual model that specifies the various enviromnental aspects that are relevant for strategic decision making, how they relate to each other, and ,defines them in a more formal way that is more suited for information systems development. -Chapter 4 is dedicated to the evaluation of the proposed model on the basis of its application to a concrete environment to evaluate its suitability to describe the current conditions and potential evolution of a real environment and get an idea of its usefulness. -Chapter 5 goes a step further by assembling a toolbox describing a set of methods that can be used to analyze the various environmental aspects put forward by the model and by providing more detailed specifications for a number of them to show how our model can be used to facilitate their implementation as software tools. -Chapter 6 describes a prototype of a strategic decision support tool that allow the analysis of some of the aspects of the environment that are not well supported by existing tools and namely to analyze the relationship between multiple actors and issues. The usefulness of this prototype is evaluated on the basis of its application to a concrete environment. -Chapter 7 finally concludes this thesis by making a summary of its various contributions and by proposing further interesting research directions.

The policy-making structure of European regulatory networks and the domestic adoption of standards

European regulatory networks (ERNs) constitute the main governance instrument for the informal co-ordination of public regulation at the European Union (EU) level. They are in charge of co-ordinating national regulators and ensuring the implementation of harmonized regulatory policies across the EU, while also offering sector-specific expertise to the Commission. To this aim, ERNs develop 'best practices' and benchmarking procedures in the form of standards, norms and guidelines to be adopted in member states. In this paper, we focus on the Committee of European Securities Regulators and examine the consequences of the policy-making structure of ERNs on the domestic adoption of standards. We find that the regulators of countries with larger financial industries tend to occupy more central positions in the network, especially among newer member states. In turn, network centrality is associated with a more prompt domestic adoption of standards.

Neutralizing and protective antibodies directed against vaccinia virus envelope antigens.

The infection mechanism of vaccinia virus is largely unknown. Neither the attachment protein of extracellular enveloped virus (EEV), the biologically relevant infectious form of the virus, nor its cellular receptor has been identified. Surprisingly, all former attempts using antibodies to block EEV infection of cells in vitro had failed. Here, we report the production of an anti-envelope hyperimmune serum with EEV neutralizing activity and show that a polyclonal antiserum against the extraviral domain of protein B5R also inhibited EEV infection. In vivo, mice vaccinated with B5R protein were protected against a lethal vaccinia virus challenge. This protectivity is likely to be mediated by neutralizing antibodies. Protein A33R, but not A34R and A36R, also proved to be protective in active and passive vaccination experiments. However, in contrast to B5R, A33R protectivity did not correlate with antibody titers. Because anti-A33R antibodies did not neutralize EEV in vitro, the protectivity mediated by A33R protein probably involves a mechanism different from simple antibody binding. Taken together, our results suggest that antibodies to a specific protective epitope or epitopes on protein B5R are able to prevent EEV infection. The protein encoded by the B5R gene is therefore likely to play a crucial role in the initial steps of vaccinia virus infection-binding to a host cell and entry into its cytoplasm.

Application by Waterford Institute of Technology for Designation as a University (Port Report)

This report provides our advice to the Minister for Education and Science on the application for designation as a university made by Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT). WIT submitted an application for designation in February 2006. There is a statutory procedure for the creation of a new university under Section 9 of the Universities Act 1997. We were asked to advise the Minister on the merits of the submission in order for her to provide guidance to Government on whether such a formal statutory review should be initiated. It is not a straightforward task to advise on this case for several reasons. These include the facts that: the regulatory environment for Institutes of Technology has changed significantly since WIT made their application; and the designation of any IoT would potentially challenge the government’s current higher education policy. So our report has to range more widely than the merits of the WIT application, taken at face value.

Coevolution of adaptive technology, maladaptive culture and population size in a producer-scrounger game.

Technology (i.e. tools, methods of cultivation and domestication, systems of construction and appropriation, machines) has increased the vital rates of humans, and is one of the defining features of the transition from Malthusian ecological stagnation to a potentially perpetual rising population growth. Maladaptations, on the other hand, encompass behaviours, customs and practices that decrease the vital rates of individuals. Technology and maladaptations are part of the total stock of culture carried by the individuals in a population. Here, we develop a quantitative model for the coevolution of cumulative adaptive technology and maladaptive culture in a 'producer-scrounger' game, which can also usefully be interpreted as an 'individual-social' learner interaction. Producers (individual learners) are assumed to invent new adaptations and maladaptations by trial-and-error learning, insight or deduction, and they pay the cost of innovation. Scroungers (social learners) are assumed to copy or imitate (cultural transmission) both the adaptations and maladaptations generated by producers. We show that the coevolutionary dynamics of producers and scroungers in the presence of cultural transmission can have a variety of effects on population carrying capacity. From stable polymorphism, where scroungers bring an advantage to the population (increase in carrying capacity), to periodic cycling, where scroungers decrease carrying capacity, we find that selection-driven cultural innovation and transmission may send a population on the path of indefinite growth or to extinction.

Struggles for meaning and struggles for control: the diffusion of bandwagon technology in two institutional environments

In this thesis, I examine the diffusion process for a complex medical technology, the PET scanner, in two different health care systems, one of which is more market-oriented (Switzerland) and the other more centrally managed by a public agency (Quebec). The research draws on institutional and socio-political theories of the diffusion of innovations to examine how institutional contexts affect processes of diffusion. I find that diffusion proceeds more rapidly in Switzerland than in Quebec, but that processes in both jurisdictions are characterized by intense struggles among providers and between providers and public agencies. I show that the institutional environment influences these processes by determining the patterns of material resources and authority available to actors in their struggles to strategically control the technology, and by constituting the discursive resources or institutional logics on which actors may legitimately draw in their struggles to give meaning to the technology in line with their interests and values. This thesis illustrates how institutional structures and meanings manifest themselves in the context of specific decisions within an organizational field, and reveals the ways in which governance structures may be contested and realigned when they conflict with interests that are legitimized by dominant institutional logics. It is argued that this form of contestation and readjustment at the margins constitutes one mechanism by which institutional frameworks are tested, stretched and reproduced or redefined.

Antibodies directed against rubella virus induce demyelination in aggregating rat brain cell cultures.

To link the presence of intrathecal virus-specific oligoclonal immunoglobulin G (IgG) in multiple sclerosis patients to a demyelinating activity, aggregating rat brain cell cultures were treated with antibodies directed against two viruses, namely, rubella (RV) and hepatitis B (HB). Anti-RV antibodies in the presence of complement decreased myelin basic protein concentrations in a dose-dependent manner, whereas anti-HB antibodies had no effect. A similar but less pronounced effect was observed on the enzymatic activity of 2',3'-cyclic nucleotide 3'-phosphohydrolase, which is enriched in noncompact membranes of oligodendrocytes. These effects were comparable to those in cultures treated with antibodies directed against myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein (MOG), previously found to be myelinotoxic both in vitro and in vivo. Sequence homologies were found between structural glycoprotein E(2) of RV and MOG, suggesting that demyelination was due to molecular mimicry. To support the hypothesis that demyelination was caused by anti-RV IgG that recognized an MOG epitope, we found that anti-RV antibodies depleted MOG in a dose-dependent manner. Further evidence came from the demonstration that anti-RV and anti-MOG IgG colocalized on oligodendrocyte processes and that both revealed by Western blot a 28 kDa protein in CNS myelin, a molecular weight corresponding to MOG. These findings suggest that a virus such as RV exhibiting molecular mimicry with MOG can trigger an autoimmune demyelination.