Industry-government collaboration : Queensland's IT&T Strategy and the Information Industries Board

This paper presents a field study of the Queensland Information Technology and Telecommunications Industry Strategy (QITIS), and of the Information Industries Board (IIB), a joint industry-state government body established in 1992 to oversee the implementation of that strategy for the development of the IT&T Industry in Queensland. The aim of the study was to analyse differing stakeholder perspectives on the strategy and on its implementation by the IIB. The study forms part of a longer-term review which aims to develop methodologies for the selection of appropriate strategies for the IT&T Industry, and for the evaluation of outcomes of strategy.

Bayesian networks for information synthesis in complex systems

This thesis introduces a method of applying Bayesian Networks to combine information from a range of data sources for effective decision support systems. It develops a set of techniques in development, validation, visualisation, and application of Complex Systems models, with a working demonstration in an Australian airport environment. The methods presented here have provided a modelling approach that produces highly flexible, informative and applicable interpretations of a system's behaviour under uncertain conditions. These end-to-end techniques are applied to the development of model based dashboards to support operators and decision makers in the multi-stakeholder airport environment. They provide highly flexible and informative interpretations and confidence in these interpretations of a system's behaviour under uncertain conditions.

Marginal costs of hospital-acquired conditions : information for priority-setting for patient safety programmes and research

Objective: To estimate the relative inpatient costs of hospital-acquired conditions. Methods: Patient level costs were estimated using computerized costing systems that log individual utilization of inpatient services and apply sophisticated cost estimates from the hospital's general ledger. Occurrence of hospital-acquired conditions was identified using an Australian ‘condition-onset' flag for diagnoses not present on admission. These were grouped to yield a comprehensive set of 144 categories of hospital-acquired conditions to summarize data coded with ICD-10. Standard linear regression techniques were used to identify the independent contribution of hospital-acquired conditions to costs, taking into account the case-mix of a sample of acute inpatients (n = 1,699,997) treated in Australian public hospitals in Victoria (2005/06) and Queensland (2006/07). Results: The most costly types of complications were post-procedure endocrine/metabolic disorders, adding AU$21,827 to the cost of an episode, followed by MRSA (AU$19,881) and enterocolitis due to Clostridium difficile (AU$19,743). Aggregate costs to the system, however, were highest for septicaemia (AU$41.4 million), complications of cardiac and vascular implants other than septicaemia (AU$28.7 million), acute lower respiratory infections, including influenza and pneumonia (AU$27.8 million) and UTI (AU$24.7 million). Hospital-acquired complications are estimated to add 17.3% to treatment costs in this sample. Conclusions: Patient safety efforts frequently focus on dramatic but rare complications with very serious patient harm. Previous studies of the costs of adverse events have provided information on ‘indicators’ of safety problems rather than the full range of hospital-acquired conditions. Adding a cost dimension to priority-setting could result in changes to the focus of patient safety programmes and research. Financial information should be combined with information on patient outcomes to allow for cost-utility evaluation of future interventions.