1,720,956 research outputs found
Planning and control of medical device investments by Italian public health authorities: A means to improve the decision-making process
No full textWithin the context of increased health care spending in Italy and governmental cost-containment efforts,
attention has focused on the medical device sector also in light of the newly introduced centralized procurement
policy, of Health Technology Assessment, and of the Government’s call for a more managerial-type
approach by public health authorities. In this scenario, it became necessary to analyse investments in medical
devices and to assess their contribution not only to the health of patients, but also to – if any – the whole
economy and to the nation’s economic growth. Public health authorities must now also assess the effect of
investments on profitability by evaluating investment regenerations based on the diagnosis-related group
revenue for inpatients and on the Regional tariffs established by the Italian National Health Service for
outpatients. Knowledge of the medical device sector, and planning and control systems, will enable public
health authorities to improve their internal decision-making processes, which in turn will enable them to
reach their objectives of long-term economic balance and of quality of health care services to citizens
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
De innovatione: The concept of innovation for medical technologies and its implications for healthcare policy-making
No full textInnovation is constantly evoked as an imperative to drive growth, however identifying an actionable and agreed upon definition that applies to different settings and purposes is not trivial. In healthcare, innovation has often been described in relation to pharmaceuticals. Defining innovation allows for proper recognition and rewarding, thus fostering present and future innovativeness in the system. Current definitions adopted by payers are focused on therapeutic added value and more specifically include clinically significant benefit, large health gains, and favorable risk-benefit balance at an acceptable cost. However, they may not be fully adequate to assess medical devices. Based on a systematic review of the academic literature in the field, we aim at summarizing acceptable definitions of innovation in relation to medical devices. Based on the innovation management and economics theory, proposed definitions have been classified according to the source of innovation, to the degree of discontinuity introduced and to the impact associated to the technology. They have also been compared with definitions adopted for drugs by main healthcare reimbursement agencies. Decision-making in healthcare often favors static allocative efficiency at the expense of incentives to innovate and obtaining valuable innovation, that is dynamic allocative efficiency. In the long run, this attitude may artificially shrink net returns from innovation and rebound on the sustainability of the healthcare systems, an undesirable consequence that a farsighted shared notion of innovation should try to prevent
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
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
Author-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.
No full textAuthor-wise bibliometric analysis based on entropy.</p
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