1,720,997 research outputs found
Economic evidence for rapid microbiological identification of bloodstream infections: a scoping review
No full textThis scoping review aims to map the existing economic evidence related to the use of rapid microbiological identification techniques for diagnosing bloodstream infections (BSIs) in hospital settings. The review will explore and describe various forms of economic evaluations, including cost-effectiveness, cost-utility, cost-benefit, and budget impact analyses. By identifying and summarizing the breadth of available literature, the project seeks to inform clinical and policy decisions regarding the value and efficiency of rapid diagnostic technologies in improving patient outcomes and optimizing healthcare resource use
VP81 Health Technology Assessment And Rare Disease Decision Making: Focus On Orphan Drugs
No full textINTRODUCTION:Health Technology Assessment (HTA) is applied to determine the value of innovative technologies. It usually relies on robust assessment of the clinical cost-effectiveness of the technology, while clinical and economic evidence required for this purpose are often not available for orphan drugs (OD) (1,2). The objective of the study is to undertake a systematic comparison between HTA agencies worldwide in order to identify similarities and differences in the methods and processes in HTA of OD.METHODS:A cross-sectional web-based survey was conducted between September 2013 and May 2015. The data were obtained from a semi-structured questionnaire. We received responces from 161 HTA organizations based in 39 countries.RESULTS:HTA of OD is performed by agencies in South America (38.5 percent), followed by agencies in Australia (37.5 percent) and Europe (36.1 percent). The agencies in high income countries produce more assessments of OD (36.8 percent), which in 31.2 percent they determine as innovative technologies compared with 11.8 percent of the units based in low income countries and active in OD assessment (11.1 percent). We prove association (p< .05) between (i) the type of HTA and income per capita; the level at which the organization operates; its main activity; and the level of recommendation dissemination; (ii) the main target group and consumers of the final HTA product; the stage of evolution of the technology, on which it is likely to be assessed; and approaches to identify innovative technologies. The most active in the preparation of HTA reports are biomedical companies or other organizations in the private sector (50.0 percent) and organizations in the pharmaceutical and/or medical industry (66.7 percent). HTA bodies that assess OD develop (36.0 percent) and distribute recommendations (35.9 percent) nationally; their main activity is to produce guidelines for good clinical practice (46.9 percent). Agencies that perform OD assessment are active in evaluation of innovative (37.2 percent) and emerging (35.9 percent) technologies, which are able to be identified by developing early warning systems (32.0 percent).CONCLUSIONS:Making coverage decisions based on HTA recommendations control the technologies introduction into the healthcare system, that is why it's very important that this tool is properly adjusted to the specific needs of OD assessment (3).</jats:sec
VP94 Framework Of High-Quality Value Assessment Criteria In Health Care
No full textINTRODUCTION:No single assessment can evaluate the wide spectrum of health technologies pending access to healthcare systems. It is important to envision a complex systematic framework, in which different instruments are used for different purposes - all criteria should be used to ensure the transparency of the process, and should model good assessment and implementation practices (1,2).METHODS:A cross-sectional web-based survey was conducted from September 2013 to May 2015 which was designed to gain information about the present status of Health Technology Assessment (HTA) activities; to examine its institutional contexts and the kind of application of its principles, logic, assessment methods, tools and best practices.RESULTS:A total number of 161 questionnaires from 39 countries on 6 continents were received representing a 41.7 percent response rate. Based on analysis of the results, a complex systematic framework for value assessment was designed. Five major features define the framework that can fully measure the common and support the evaluation of more complex health technologies: (i) implementation of higher-order evaluation approaches that support complex multi-criteria assessment, rather than emphasizing only the use of basic evaluation procedures; (ii) precise evaluation of critical criteria, that measure technologies directly as they will be used in actual practical settings; (iii) assessment approaches, based on international best HTA practices that are accurate, in terms of the content and context of the evaluated technology, as well as the expected performance; (iv) high-fidelity priority-setting elements that are evaluation sensitive; and (v) assessments that are sound, unbiased, and transparent – in order to be truly valid for a wide range of technologies, assessments should evaluate them accurately and do so reliably across technology content and context. They should be unbiased and accessible and used in ways that support superior outcomes and higher quality for healthcare systems.CONCLUSIONS:The healthcare systems that decide to use this framework should evaluate the set of assessments they select and develop them against the standards required, and should use them in ways for which they have been appropriately validated and in contexts that ensure a transparent evaluation process (3).</jats:sec
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
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
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