143,142 research outputs found
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The rationale of e-health evaluation: The case of NHS Direct
An important area of research is that of the evaluation of e-health services. A holistic e-health evaluation framework should address the aspects that are hampering healthcare services from embracing the full potential of information and communication technologies towards successful e-health initiatives. Towards building a holistic evaluation framework for e-health services, this paper is intended to examine the rationale of e-health evaluation, as the paper argues that this aspect should be addressed first in the development of such a framework. NHS Direct which is one of the largest e-health services in the world has been chosen to discuss and validate a set of evaluation rationales and their applicability in practice
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Benchmarking performance management systems
The Balanced Scorecard and associated performance management approaches, has become a widely practiced and popular management reporting method in recent times. Moreover, enabling technology, which assists in the delivery and personalisation of corporate performance information, is having a deeper and more rapid impact than ever before. This paper presents a brief comparative benchmarking study of leading enterprise performance management systems. Also, the author discusses the merits of bespoke internet technology development and out-of-the-box portal functionalities. An analysis of key business drivers and implementation risks of such approaches is highlighted via a case study example, and concludes the paper
System Energy Assessment (SEA), Defining a Standard Measure of EROI for Energy Businesses as Whole Systems
A more objective method for measuring the energy needs of businesses, System
Energy Assessment (SEA), identifies the natural boundaries of businesses as
self-managing net-energy systems, of controlled and self-managing parts. The
method is demonstrated using a model Wind Farm case study, and applied to
defining a true physical measure of its energy productivity for society
(EROI-S), the global ratio of energy produced to energy cost. The traceable
needs of business technology are combined with assignable energy needs for all
other operating services. That serves to correct a large natural gap in energy
use information. Current methods count traceable energy receipts for technology
use. Self-managing services employed by businesses outsource their own energy
needs to operate, and leave no records to trace. Those uncounted energy demands
are often 80% of the total embodied energy of business end products. The scale
of this "dark energy" was discovered from differing global accounts, and
corrected so the average energy cost per dollar for businesses would equal the
world average energy use per dollar of GDP. Presently the energy needs of paid
services that outsource their own energy needs are counted for lack of
information to be "0". Our default assumption is to treat them as "average".
The result is to assign total energy use and impacts to the demand for energy
services, for a "Scope 4" GHG assessment level. Counting only the energy uses
of technology understates the energy needs of business services, as if services
were more energy efficient than technology. The result confirms a similar
finding by Hall et. al. in 1981 [9]. We use exhaustive search for what a
business needs to operate as a whole, locating a natural physical boundary for
its working parts, to define businesses as physical rather than statistical
subjects of science. :measurement, natural systemsComment: 33 pages, 15 figures, accepted as part of pending special issue on
EROI organized by Charlie Hall for Sustainability (MDPI
Assessing digital preservation frameworks: the approach of the SHAMAN project
How can we deliver infrastructure capable of supporting the
preservation of digital objects, as well as the services that can be applied to those digital objects, in ways that future unknown systems will understand? A critical problem in developing systems is the process of validating whether the delivered solution effectively reflects the validated requirements. This is a challenge also for the EU-funded SHAMAN project, which aims to develop an integrated preservation framework using grid-technologies for distributed networks of digital preservation systems, for managing the storage, access, presentation, and manipulation of digital objects over time. Recognising this, the project team ensured that alongside the user requirements an assessment framework was developed. This paper presents the assessment of the SHAMAN demonstrators for the memory institution, industrial design and engineering and eScience domains, from the point of view of
userās needs and fitness for purpose. An innovative synergistic use of TRAC criteria, DRAMBORA risk registry and mitigation strategies, iRODS rules and information system models requirements has been designed, with the underlying goal to define associated policies, rules and state information, and make them wherever possible machine-encodable and enforceable. The described assessment framework can be valuable not only for the implementers of this project preservation framework, but for the wider digital preservation community, because it provides a
holistic approach to assessing and validating the preservation of digital libraries, digital repositories and data centres
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