Planificación de la logística en redes de salud: análisis y resolución

Healthcare networks bring together a wide range of public and private entities (hospitals, specific service units, healthcare professionals, …) at local or regional level that seek for management effectiveness, decisional efficacy and coordination. This thesis analyzes the problem statement: "How can those organizations integrate their internal logistic network?" Theories, concepts and integration guidelines from supply chain management theory have been applied to investigate this problem. On healthcare networks already in place, the application of centralized planning procedures is the more appropriate management strategy to rationalize and pilot the change processes. Hence, a general tactical level model is stated as a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model supporting decisions on the global view of network layout and the coordinating policy among facilities in such networks. Apart from the adoption of optimization tools to provide a framework for costefficient operations, we have identified that information sharing and service level agreements are the key aspects in the effective accomplishment of logistics integration. We have conducted a case study at the Andalusian Regional Network of Clinical Laboratories (ANCL), a large healthcare network with geographically dispersed hospitals, clinics, and testing laboratories, that initiated an organizational strategy to enhance accessibility to services, quality of care and cost savings. Different solution strategies have been addressed in the MILP model that arises, in order to embed this model into a graphical, interactive and responsive Decision Support System (DSS) tool to support ANCL planners’ analysis of What-If scenarios. Drawing on the ANCL case study, it appears that the integration of the Information Tecnologies (IT) Systems at the different facilities and locations within the network and the centralization of the logistic planning procedure can be of invaluable help for aligning operational models and organizational behavior around demand, capacity and network configuration. This suggests that although such integration projects are difficult, costly and complex, they seem worth undertaking.Las Redes de Salud se basan en el trabajo en común de una variedad de entidades públicas y privadas (hospitales, unidades de servicios específicos, profesionales sanitarios,...) a nivel local o regional, en busca de una gestión efectiva, con toma de decisiones y coordinación eficientes. Esta tesis analiza la siguiente pregunta de investigación: "¿Cómo pueden las organizaciones integrar su red logística interna" Las teorías, conceptos y directrices de integración de la Cadena de Suministro se han aplicado para investigar este problema. En redes de salud ya funcionando, la aplicación de procedimientos de planificación centralizada se identifica como la estrategia de gestión más adecuada para racionalizar y pilotar los procesos de cambio. Por ello, planteamos abordar el objeto de la tesis mediante un modelo de programación lineal entera mixta (MILP) de nivel táctico, del que emanarán las decisiones sobre la visión global del diseño de la red y la política de coordinación entre los miembros de la red. Además de la adopción de herramientas de optimización para proporcionar un marco para operaciones eficientes en costes, hemos identificado como aspectos clave en la consecución efectiva de la integración logística en este tipo de redes el intercambio de información y el cumplimiento de acuerdos de nivel de servicio. Como caso práctico, hemos realizado esta integración en la Red Andaluza Regional de Laboratorios Clínicos (ANCL), una red sanitaria extensa con hospitales, clínicas y laboratorios clínicos dispersos geográficamente, que inició una estrategia de cambio organizacional para mejorar la accesibilidad al servicio de pruebas clínicas, la calidad del servicio y propiciar ahorro de costes. Sobre el MILP que resulta al abordar este caso de estudio, hemos aplicado diferentes estrategias de solución. Puesto que este modelo de optimización ha de usarse como el corazón de un Sistema de Soporte a la Decisión (DSS) a disposición de los planificadores ANCL para realizar análisis de escenarios, la agilidad en la generación de soluciones es un requisito primordial. Basándonos en nuestra experiencia con la ANCL, parece que tanto la integración de los sistemas de Tecnologías de Información de los diferentes miembros en la red como la centralización del procedimiento de planificación logística (a través del cual se fijan las directrices de coordinación anual) son de inestimable ayuda para la alineación del modelo operativo y el comportamiento organizacional en torno a demanda, capacidad y configuración de red. Esto sugiere que aunque tales proyectos de integración sean difíciles, costosos y complejos, el esfuerzo parece valer la pena

P4TC - Provably-Secure yet Practical Privacy-Preserving Toll Collection

Electronic toll collection (ETC) is widely used all over the world not only to finance our road infrastructures, but also to realize advanced features like congestion management and pollution reduction by means of dynamic pricing. Unfortunately, existing systems rely on user identification and allow tracing a user’s movements. Several abuses of this personalized location data have already become public. In view of the planned Europeanwide interoperable tolling system EETS and the new EU General Data Protection Regulation, location privacy becomes of particular importance. In this paper, we propose a flexible security model and crypto protocol framework designed for privacy-preserving toll collection in the most dominant setting, i.e., Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC) ETC. A major challenge in designing the framework at hand was to combine provable security and practicality, where the latter includes practical performance figures and a suitable treatment of real-world issues, like broken onboard units etc. To the best of our knowledge, our work is the first in the DSRC setting with a rigorous security model and proof and arguably the most comprehensive formal treatment of ETC security and privacy overall. Additionally, we provide a prototypical implementation on realistic hardware which already features fairly practical performance figures. An interaction between an onboard unit and a road-side unit is estimated to take less than a second allowing for toll collection at full speed assuming one road-side unit per lane

Adaptive Methods for Robust Document Image Understanding

A vast amount of digital document material is continuously being produced as part of major digitization efforts around the world. In this context, generic and efficient automatic solutions for document image understanding represent a stringent necessity. We propose a generic framework for document image understanding systems, usable for practically any document types available in digital form. Following the introduced workflow, we shift our attention to each of the following processing stages in turn: quality assurance, image enhancement, color reduction and binarization, skew and orientation detection, page segmentation and logical layout analysis. We review the state of the art in each area, identify current defficiencies, point out promising directions and give specific guidelines for future investigation. We address some of the identified issues by means of novel algorithmic solutions putting special focus on generality, computational efficiency and the exploitation of all available sources of information. More specifically, we introduce the following original methods: a fully automatic detection of color reference targets in digitized material, accurate foreground extraction from color historical documents, font enhancement for hot metal typesetted prints, a theoretically optimal solution for the document binarization problem from both computational complexity- and threshold selection point of view, a layout-independent skew and orientation detection, a robust and versatile page segmentation method, a semi-automatic front page detection algorithm and a complete framework for article segmentation in periodical publications. The proposed methods are experimentally evaluated on large datasets consisting of real-life heterogeneous document scans. The obtained results show that a document understanding system combining these modules is able to robustly process a wide variety of documents with good overall accuracy

Altruistically Inclined?: The Behavioral Sciences, Evolutionary Theory, and the Origins of Reciprocity

Altruistically Inclined? examines the implications of recent research in the natural sciences for two important social scientific approaches to individual behavior: the economic/rational choice approach and the sociological/anthropological. It considers jointly two controversial and related ideas: the operation of group selection within early human evolutionary processes and the likelihood of modularity—domain-specific adaptations in our cognitive mechanisms and behavioral predispositions. Experimental research shows that people will often cooperate in one-shot prisoner\u27s dilemma (PD) games and reject positive offers in ultimatum games, contradicting commonly accepted notions of rationality. Upon first appearance, predispositions to behave in this fashion could not have been favored by natural selection operating only at the level of the individual organism. Emphasizing universal and variable features of human culture, developing research on how the brain functions, and refinements of thinking about levels of selection in evolutionary processes, Alexander J. Field argues that humans are born with the rudiments of a PD solution module—and differentially prepared to learn norms supportive of it. His emphasis on failure to harm, as opposed to the provision of affirmative assistance, as the empirically dominant form of altruistic behavior is also novel. The point of departure and principal point of reference is economics. But Altruistically Inclined? will interest a broad range of scholars in the social and behavioral sciences, natural scientists concerned with the implications of research and debates within their fields for the conduct of work elsewhere, and educated lay readers curious about essential features of human nature.https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/faculty_books/1325/thumbnail.jp

Exploration of alternative frameworks for transportation infrastructure strategy development

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 2010.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references.This thesis introduces the notion of a strategy development framework for transportation infrastructure systems. A strategy development framework has several dimensions: the organizations that own.infrastructure, the ownership structure employed, the type and quantity of revenues generated, the revenue allocation methods for re-investing in the infrastructure, the degree of integration across transportation modes and other sectors, and the geographic scales controlled. We analyze the behavior of a range of alternative frameworks through a combined quantitative-qualitative approach, using Portugal's highway transportation system as the context. Drawing on strategy literature from the management field, we begin by defining and characterizing a range of alternative strategy development frameworks for transportation infrastructure systems. Next, we analyze these frameworks quantitatively using an agent-based model which simulates the evolution of Portugal's intercity highway network over time and space. By varying the frameworks' dimensions (e.g., type of revenue, revenue allocation method, geographic scale of control), we observe differences in the resulting investment decisions for the network. We evaluate the performance of these investment decisions according to a range of metrics in order to determine which frameworks lead to desirable outcomes. The simulation, however, cannot fully capture the relationship between a framework and investment outcomes for the highway system, so we complement the model with a qualitative analysis which combines empirical cases and predicted stakeholder dynamics. The integrated quantitative-qualitative evaluation allows us to explain a wider range of trade-offs associated with each alternative framework. The contributions of this research are threefold: (1) we offer the notion of strategy development, which allows for recognition and inclusion of emergent outcomes, as an alternative to the narrower concept of transportation planning; (2) we determine the influence of advanced transportation technologies (typically studied for their operational benefits) on strategy development; and (3) we explore the consequences of fundamental changes to the strategy development framework, notably along the dimension of geographic scale. While our theory and methods are applied to the case of Portugal's highway system-and we strive to produce results of value to that nation-we believe they can be profitably applied in other transportation contexts as well.by Travis P. Dunn.Ph.D

Anonymous Point Collection - Improved Models and Security Definitions

This work is a comprehensive, formal treatment of anonymous point collection. The proposed definition does not only provide a strong notion of security and privacy, but also covers features which are important for practical use. An efficient realization is presented and proven to fulfill the proposed definition. The resulting building block is the first one that allows for anonymous two-way transactions, has semi-offline capabilities, yields constant storage size, and is provably secure