1,720,975 research outputs found
Relevance of Western Medicine and TCM in the Chinese and European Markets: An Overview
No full textTraditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) was developed more than 2,500
years ago as a system for studying human physiology and pathology, as
well as for preventing, diagnosing, and treating illnesses. The most common
TCM practices include herbal and nutritional therapy, restorative
physical exercises (qigong), meditation, acupuncture (stimulating specific
points of the body using various techniques), remedial massage (tuina),
moxibustion (applying heat to acupuncture points by burning herbs above
the skin’s surface) and tai chi (dance-like body movements combined with
coordinated breathing and mental focus)
Effect of Aging on Healthcare Industry’s Cooperation Opportunities Between Europe and China
No full textChina, as one of the largest emerging markets in the world, provides
tremendous
cooperation opportunities with other countries in many areas.
This chapter focuses specially on potential cooperation between China
and Europe in the healthcare industry. In China, the healthcare industry
has developed rapidly since 2005. According to the statistical data from
National Bureau of Statistics of the People’s Republic of China, the total
expenditure on healthcare presents a growth trend, and its proportion in
GDP has risen as well. In 2012, the total expenditure on healthcare was
RMB 2,784.68 billion, and its percentage of GDP reached 5.36
Healthcare Policies and Systems in Europe and China Comparisons and Synergies
No full textWhile facing different stages of economic development, China and
Europe share same demographic concerns and sustainability issues.
Europe has developed good practices of universal healthcare systems,
but significant and dramatic changes that have taken place over the past
two decades have led to a decrease in health expenditure and a decline in
public assistance. Several European countries need to improve public services,
especially for the growing aging population, while concurrently
decreasing healthcare spending.
Europe has vast experience in developing and operating healthcare
policies including prevention and long-term care assistance. European
industries have reached a scale of efficiency, global competitiveness, and
sophisticated approaches to innovation in the pharmaceutical, equipment,
and para-pharmaceutical sectors.
On the other hand, China has embraced large reforms in the healthcare
system to upgrade the quality and coverage of assistance provided to
the Chinese people. Within this process, the universal healthcare system
has been chosen as the benchmark. Multiple strategies have been promoted
on both the supply and demand sides. Similar to Europe, China is
experiencing the challenges associated with an increasing aging population.
The geriatric population requires appropriate, specific, and long-term healthcare assistance, which costs significantly more than those services
consumed by a comparatively younger population.
A Europe–China partnership in the healthcare domain could be a
win–win strategy for several reasons. Potentially, Europe and China have
complementarities that could help each other face their specific needs in
the long run. In this scenario, China would benefit from gaining knowledge
and expertise from European countries at different levels: From how
to project and run a universal system and how to plan a specific care program
for its aging population to the use of Western medicine (WM) to
cope with new and improved medical needs of the population.
Europe could “export” to China solutions and best practices, and thus
find business opportunities. At the same time, China could export to
Europe practices and approaches of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM)
that could be cost-saving and effective in specific pathologies.
A multidisciplinary team has contributed to this book, following the
research activity and international mobility program carried out in the 4
years of the “People Marie Curie Actions Fp7-People-2013-Irses”
CHETCH, i.e., China-Europe taking care of Healthcare solutions (GA n.
612589).
Researchers in the social science and humanities area have compared
the European and Chinese healthcare systems at different levels, including
value systems and ethical issues.
The economic experts have analyzed the integration reached between
China and Europe in the healthcare-related industries (technologies, pharmaceutical,
and other). Foreign direct investments and trade flow trends
were studied at the regional and provincial levels. The typical cost–benefit
tools were used to evaluate the economic impact of integrating WM and
TCM practices, supporting the medical team of experts.
The legal instruments have defined obstacles and plausible solutions
that can be generated by the regulatory environment, as well as appropriate
solutions to enhance collaboration both at institutional, medical practice,
and business levels.
The team of experts in the medical field have investigated several
areas of integration. The team has developed a process of recognition and
scientific validation of TCM versus complementary alternative medicine (CAM) at different levels, as recommended by the World Health
Organization Traditional Medicine Strategy 2003-2005.
A central role was played, in the whole project, by acupuncture.
Indeed, in the social and historical context of Europe, the integration of
acupuncture in European Healthcare Systems is an opportunity. The main
motivation is the increase in the elderly population and in chronic diseases:
the chronic patient is a frail patient with poor quality of life who
generates costs to the healthcare system, with direct and indirect costs.
The elderly patient often takes polypharmacological therapy, which
reduces therapeutic compliance and causes side effects.
Evidence-based medicine (EBM) demonstrates that acupuncture is
effective in treating chronic diseases, particularly pain, improves the quality
of life, and helps to reduce/eliminate drug intake, significantly reducing
the problem of side effects. Other fields of application of acupuncture,
alone or integrated with WM, are as a support to fertility and assisted
reproduction therapy (ART) and for the treatment of side effects caused
by oncological therapies. Acupuncture has proven to be safe and costeffective,
and the EBM data are favorable to its integration in the National
Healthcare System.
Nevertheless, to practice acupuncture, appropriate training is fundamental.
The gold standard role is played by the physician (medical doctor),
who has to combine western medicine training with an appropriate
amount of hours of theoretical and practical learning of acupuncture and
Chinese medicine.
Other professionals, apart from the medical one, must have theoretical
and practical training, at least equal to that offered in China to Chinese
medicine students in Chinese traditional medicine universities, to achieve
a sufficient expertise in patient management.
Thanks to its multi-level analysis, the book contributes to increase the
availability of interdisciplinary studies providing a comprehensive overview
(including medical, legal, economic, and humanities perspectives) of
Europe–China relations in the healthcare domain. This comprehensive
study is also the base for further projects where the integration of WM and
TCM needs to be further explored and developed, also on the basis of scientific evidence of the strong benefit that both patients and systems can get. Nevertheless, a cultural shift is needed to change the perception, in
Europe, about the role and foundations of TCM. Training programs and
specific public engagement activities are needed to increase the awareness
of the tremendous achievements that Europe could get by deeply integrating
TCM with the Western approach for the benefit of the patient and their
treatments
Assessing costs, benefits, and cost-effectiveness in TCM
No full textThe chapter intends to fill the gap in evidence on the potential benefits of
introducing Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practices, with respect to
its costs. In this regard, the different economic evaluations for the healthcare
sector were described. Based on the results of the literature review,
which showed a relative lack for standardized cost-benefit tools and methods
examining the potential positive impact of TCM, a possible approach
was structured, describing the suggested steps and necessary tools that
would have to be adopted in order to run a complete appraisal of the costeffectiveness
of TCM. The steps of the evaluation include gathering cost
information; identifying benefits, computing such CBA outcome measures
as net benefits and benefit-cost ratios; running cost-effectiveness analyses
(CEAs) for additional confirmation of the results through the cost-effectiveness,
reversed cost-effectiveness, and incremental cost-effectiveness
ratios; and applying additional cost-utility analysis (CUA) tools in order to
obtain the cost per quality-adjusted life year (QALY) and reversed cost per
QALY outcome measures. The results could also be represented visually
by using the incremental cost-effectiveness plane and cost-effectiveness
acceptability curve
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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