Data mining in medical records for the enhancement of strategic decisions: a case study

The impact and popularity of competition concept has been increasing in the last decades and this concept has escalated the importance of giving right decision for organizations. Decision makers have encountered the fact of using proper scientific methods instead of using intuitive and emotional choices in decision making process. In this context, many decision support models and relevant systems are still being developed in order to assist the strategic management mechanisms. There is also a critical need for automated approaches for effective and efficient utilization of massive amount of data to support corporate and individuals in strategic planning and decision-making. Data mining techniques have been used to uncover hidden patterns and relations, to summarize the data in novel ways that are both understandable and useful to the executives and also to predict future trends and behaviors in business. There has been a large body of research and practice focusing on different data mining techniques and methodologies. In this study, a large volume of record set extracted from an outpatient clinic’s medical database is used to apply data mining techniques. In the first phase of the study, the raw data in the record set are collected, preprocessed, cleaned up and eventually transformed into a suitable format for data mining. In the second phase, some of the association rule algorithms are applied to the data set in order to uncover rules for quantifying the relationship between some of the attributes in the medical records. The results are observed and comparative analysis of the observed results among different association algorithms is made. The results showed us that some critical and reasonable relations exist in the outpatient clinic operations of the hospital which could aid the hospital management to change and improve their managerial strategies regarding the quality of services given to outpatients.Decision Making, Medical Records, Data Mining, Association Rules, Outpatient Clinic.

Strategy Implementation Challenges in Albanian Organizations

In Albania 2011, have been active 78.4 thousand enterprises. These enterprises have 280.8 thousand employed, where 47 percent of them worked in 1,684 enterprises with 20 and more persons employed. These enterprises represent also 61 percent of the total turnover and 75 percent of the total investments. These enterprises dominate in industry and construction sectors. Enterprises with 1-4 employed represent 91 percent of the total enterprises. They represent 14 percent of total turnover.   Small enterprises are dominant in service producers. SMEs that emerged from the systemic change rarely have business and reputational credentials stemming from continuous activity for years that allowed them to build a distinguished culture in the complex process of organizational learning. Regardless from their limited resources and competing against experienced giants in hard crisis times they forge their philosophy of survival and success. How durable is this growth? Is it sufficient to construct business models, strategies and operations only around tangible resources and results? Maybe in view of the obsolete strategies of mature companies new entrepreneurship patterns developed in hard times in Albania will become an engine of growth?   The major question is: how such relatively new phenomena in business as SD and CSR inspire managers facing crisis impacts on sales, costs, productivity of resources, profitability and confronting rivalry from market global giants? Do they make a difference? The discussion is mainly on the way of running business. The question, who can afford SD/CSR, appears with lower stress on values. Albania has reengineered its economy and institutions observing the social and environmental impacts of that framework change. However the scientific research activity in the area of strategy and CSR is rather restricted to focus groups, there is a large progress in running all sorts of surveys allowing for comparisons if they are professionally designed and repeatedly announced. More and more companies are inviting to their websites, although the quality of information heavily differs and reporting sustainability issues is not yet the standard activity within corporate governance model. This paper is aimed at analysis of the dominant logic behind the company strategy implementation process under the impact of turbulent environment and limited resources available at crucial moments. It is assumed, basing on the secondary research in Albania in the field of strategy, operations, sustainable development and CSR, that in recent years more numerous Albanian companies incorporate the SD and CSR issues in a very pragmatic business oriented way. So, business rules go first, other rules next, but the process of learning, especially of innovative best practices, inspires the growing number of others by the force of positive example. Keywords: Strategy, sustainable, development, corporate, social responsibility

Shaping Inclusive Markets: How Funders and Intermediaries can Help Markets Move toward Greater Economic Inclusion

Positive progress toward worldwide economic inclusion is not only possible, but can also be made more possible. In Shaping Inclusive Markets, we draw lessons from history on how more inclusive markets have been achieved and highlight ways in which funders and intermediaries can strengthen the conditions for change

National minimum wage: employed students and the accommodation offset, a consultation

The national minimum wage (NMW) rules allow employers who provide accommodation for workers to count it as a benefit in kind towards payment of the NMW, up to a specified limit. This consultation document seeks input on the extent to which Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) provide accommodation to students and also employ them part-time. It asks whether, and if so how and in what circumstances, HEIs should be excluded from the accommodation offset rules. It also seeks input relating to Further Education Colleges and asks whether they should be included in any change to the law

On Modeling and Analyzing Cost Factors in Information Systems Engineering

Introducing enterprise information systems (EIS) is usually associated with high costs. It is therefore crucial to understand those factors that determine or influence these costs. Though software cost estimation has received considerable attention during the last decades, it is difficult to apply existing approaches to EIS. This difficulty particularly stems from the inability of these methods to deal with the dynamic interactions of the many technological, organizational and projectdriven cost factors which specifically arise in the context of EIS. Picking up this problem, we introduce the EcoPOST framework to investigate the complex cost structures of EIS engineering projects through qualitative cost evaluation models. This paper extends previously described concepts and introduces design rules and guidelines for cost evaluation models in order to enhance the development of meaningful and useful EcoPOST cost evaluation models. A case study illustrates the benefits of our approach. Most important, our EcoPOST framework is an important tool supporting EIS engineers in gaining a better understanding of the critical factors determining the costs of EIS engineering projects

A Critical Guide to the Regulatory Flexibility Act

This article is a guide to the Regulatory Flexibility Act. The article explores the assumptions underlying the RFA and analyzes its provisions. In addition, the article studies the RFA\u27s relationship to other regulatory analysis efforts and offers suggestions for integrating the RFA into the general scheme of regulatory reform

Study supporting the interim evaluation of the innovation principle. Final Report November 2019

The European Commission has recognised the importance of a more innovation- oriented EU acquis, gradually exploring the ways in which EU rules can support innovation. The ‘innovation principle’ was introduced to ensure that whenever policy is developed, the impact on innovation is fully assessed. However, as further discussed in this Study, the exact contours of the innovation principle have been shaped very gradually within the context of the EU better regulation agenda: originally advocated by industry in the context of the precautionary principle, the innovation principle has gradually been given a more articulate and consistent role, which aims at complementing the precautionary principle by increasing the salience of impacts on innovation during all phases of the policy cycle. This Study presents an evaluation of the current implementation of the innovation principle, limited to two of its three components, i.e. the Research and Innovation Tool included in the Better Regulation Toolbox, and the innovation deals. As a preliminary caveat, it is important to recall that the implementation of the innovation principle is still in its infancy, and thus the Study only represents a very early assessment of the extent to which the innovation principle is being correctly implemented, and whether changes would be required to make the principle more effective and useful in the context of the EU better regulation agenda. The main finding is that the innovation principle has the potential to contribute to the quality and future-proof nature of EU policy, but that significant changes and effort will be needed for this potential to fully materialise. The most evident areas for improvement are related to the lack of a clear legal basis, the lack of a widely acknowledged definition, the lack of awareness among EU officials and stakeholders, and the lack of adequate skills among those that are called to implement the innovation principle. As a result of these problems, the impact of the innovation principle on the innovation-friendliness of the EU acquis has been limited so far. The Commission should clarify in official documents that the Innovation principle does not entail a de- regulatory approach, and is not incompatible with the precautionary principle: this would also help to have the principle fully recognised and endorsed by all EU institutions, as well as by civil society, often concerned with the possible anti-regulatory narrative around the innovation principle in stakeholder discussions. Apart from clarifications, and further dissemination and training, major improvements are possible in the near future, especially if the innovation principle is brought fully in line with the evolving data-driven nature of digital innovation and provides more guidance to the Commission on how to design experimental regulation, including inter alia so-called ‘regulatory sandboxes’. Finally, the Commission should ensure that the innovation principle is given prominence with the transition to the Horizon Europe programme, in particular due to the anticipated launch of ‘missions’ in key domains

Recalibrating Patent Venue

For most of patent law’s 200-plus year history, patent holders could sue only in the district inhabited by the defendant. In 1990, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decided that the scope of permissible venue extended to all districts with personal jurisdiction over the defendant. In recent years, patentees have flocked to certain districts, fueling the widespread perception that patentees, particularly those that do not practice their patents, called non-practicing entities (“NPEs”), are abusing forum. Responsive to these concerns, Congress and the courts have moved to reinstate a more restrictive rule, culminating in the Supreme Court’s 2017 TC Heartland LLC v. Kraft Foods Group Brands LLC decision to limit venue to locations of the defendant. Yet, incredibly, to date there has been no measure of the overall pervasiveness of forum shopping and whether TC Heartland or any other venue reform will change this phenomenon. We address this gap by estimating the differential impacts of reform on filing patterns. We find, based on an analysis of approximately 1500 patent and non-patent cases filed in 2015 that about 86% of patent cases—a striking share—were brought outside of the defendant’s home district. This practice is not limited to non-practicing entities, however; corporations, universities, and individuals all filed outside of defendant districts. Things would have been different if venue were reformed, but much depends on how reform is implemented. If the Supreme Court’s decision to restrict venue to where the defendant resides or has an established place of business were already in effect, an estimated 58% of 2015 cases would have had to have been filed in a different venue. If the Congressional proposal to change venue to include home districts with research or manufacturing connections to the case had been in effect, about half the NPE cases in our sample would have needed to be refiled in another district, but only 14% of the operating company cases would. Cases would have become less concentrated in a single district, with the top district, Delaware, capturing 20–24% of cases, but the top three districts, the District of Delaware, the Eastern District of Texas, and the Northern District of California, would still have the majority of cases. Regardless of the reform, we expect smaller defendants to get more from venue relief than larger defendants because of their relatively smaller footprints. Among NPEs, universities, individuals, and small companies should be impacted to a lesser extent than patent assertion entities (“PAEs”), considerably so if the VENUE Act were enacted