MILO: Models of innovation in learning online at Key Stage 3 and 14-19: Final report

The report presents and analyses eight case studies, which reflect a wide range of models of online learning, each of which has been developed for specific reasons, largely in relation to visions of how technology can transform learning, but also to solve practical problems such as re-engaging disaffected learners and coping with rising pupil numbers

The role of local context for managers’ strategies when adapting to the COVID-19 pandemic in Norwegian homecare services: a multiple case study

Background The COVID-19 pandemic had a major impact on healthcare systems around the world, and lack of resources, lack of adequate preparedness and infection control equipment have been highlighted as common challenges. Healthcare managers’ capacity to adapt to the challenges brought by the COVID-19 pandemic is crucial to ensure safe and high-quality care during a crisis. There is a lack of research on how these adaptations are made at different levels of the homecare services system and how the local context influences the managerial strategies applied in response to a healthcare crisis. This study explores the role of local context for managers’ experiences and strategies in homecare services during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods A qualitative multiple case study in four municipalities with different geographic locations (centralized and decentralized) across Norway. A review of contingency plans was performed, and 21 managers were interviewed individually during the period March to September 2021. All interviews were conducted digitally using a semi-structured interview guide, and data was subjected to inductive thematic analysis. Results The analysis revealed variations in managers’ strategies related to the size and geographical location of the homecare services. The opportunities to apply different strategies varied among the municipalities. To ensure adequate staffing, managers collaborated, reorganized, and reallocated resources within their local health system. New guidelines, routines and infection control measures were developed and implemented in the absence of adequate preparedness plans and modified according to the local context. Supportive and present leadership in addition to collaboration and coordination across national, regional, and local levels were highlighted as key factors in all municipalities. Conclusion Managers who designed new and adaptive strategies to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic were central in ensuring high-quality Norwegian homecare services. To ensure transferability, national guidelines and measures must be context-dependent or -sensitive and must accommodate flexibility at all levels in a local healthcare service system.publishedVersio

Exploring the clients’ experience of Primary Health Care services prior to and post the implementation of appointment systems in City Health Clinics, Western Cape, South Africa

Magister Public Health - MPHLong waiting times have, for many years, been synonymous with primary health care in South Africa, and this is evident by the long queues and consistent client dissatisfaction. There are multiple contributing factors that exacerbate waiting time in Primary Health Care (PHC) facilities such as shortage of health care providers, increase in the uninsured population and South Africa’s quadruple burden of diseases. Health establishments have initiated numerous strategies to reduce long waiting times with varying degrees of success. These strategies have mostly been quantified and linked to indicators to measure their level of success in relation to quality healthcare. This research explores the clients’ perception of one such intervention, which is the implementation of an appointment system in primary care facilities in the City of Cape Town. Qualitative, exploratory descriptive methods were used to gain understanding of the impact the appointment system has had on the clients’ experience of attending health care services. The researcher also explored how clients perceive their role with regard to the shaping of their clinic’s appointment system. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with fifteen purposively sampled clients from five City Health clinics, who have implemented an appointment system through the guidance of the Appointment System Learning Initiative (ASLI). Maximum variation in sampling ensured the inclusion of small, medium and larger facilities within different geographical settings. Data analysis was done using a thematic coding approach, the themes were derived from the emerging data and were used to guide the researcher in gaining a rich picture of the clients’ experiences within the clinics. Ethical approval was requested and received from both the University of the Western Cape (UWC) and City Health prior to engaging any participants

Evaluation of the extended pre-school provision for vulnerable two year olds pilot programme: final report

In August 2006 the Scottish Government invited Glasgow, Dundee and North Ayrshire local authorities to take part in a £2 million Extended Pre-School Provision for Vulnerable 2 Year Olds Pilot Programme. The pilot programme was to run for a two year period with the key aim of providing positive preschool experiences one year early for vulnerable children and supporting their parents. Local authorities were encouraged to develop their own models of delivery within the broad aims of the project. A research team from the Department of Psychology, University of Strathclyde, headed by Dr Lisa Woolfson was contracted to carry out an evaluation of the programme in the second year of the pilot. The research study ran from April 2007 to September 2008 and evaluated children who participated in the pilot programme between August 2007 and June 2008, the second year of the pilot programme. Aims We aimed to explore the impact of the extended pilot programme on cognitive, social, emotional and behavioural developmental child outcomes, as well as the impact on participating parents. In addition we aimed to identify recruitment criteria and admission procedures used by the participating local authorities as well as staffing, numbers of children, attendance rates and practical issues around programme set-up and delivery

A review of the healthcare-management (modeling) literature published at Manufacturing and Service Operations Management

Healthcare systems throughout the world are under pressure to widen access, improve efficiency and quality of care, and reduce inequity. Achieving these conflicting goals requires innovative approaches, utilizing new technologies, data analytics, and process improvements. The operations management community has taken on this challenge: more than 10% of articles published in M&SOM in the period from 2009 to 2018 has developed analytical models that aim to inform healthcare operational decisions and improve medical decision-making. This article presents a review of the research published in M&SOM on healthcare management since its inception 20 years ago and reflects on opportunities for further research

Capacity Allocation for Clouds with Parallel Processing, Batch Arrivals, and Heterogeneous Service Requirements

Problem Definition: Allocating sufficient capacity to cloud services is a challenging task, especially when demand is time-varying, heterogeneous, contains batches, and requires multiple types of resources for processing. In this setting, providers decide whether to reserve portions of their capacity to individual job classes or to offer it in a flexible manner. Methodology/results: In collaboration with Huawei Cloud, a worldwide provider of cloud services, we propose a heuristic policy that allocates multiple types of resources to jobs and also satisfies their pre-specified service level agreements (SLAs). We model the system as a multi-class queueing network with parallel processing and multiple types of resources, where arrivals (i.e., virtual machines and containers) follow time-varying patterns and require at least one unit of each resource for processing. While virtual machines leave if they are not served immediately, containers can join a queue. We introduce a diffusion approximation of the offered load of such system and investigate its fidelity as compared to the observed data. Then, we develop a heuristic approach that leverages this approximation to determine capacity levels that satisfy probabilistic SLAs in the system with fully flexible servers. Managerial Implications: Using a data set of cloud computing requests over a representative 8-day period from Huawei Cloud, we show that our heuristic policy results in a 20% capacity reduction and better service quality as compared to a benchmark that reserves resources. In addition, we show that the system utilization induced by our policy is superior to the benchmark, i.e., it implies less idling of resources in most instances. Thus, our approach enables cloud operators to both reduce costs and achieve better performance