The television struggle : an assessment of over-the-top television evolutions in a cable dominant market

Traditional television screens have lost their monopoly on television content. With a helping hand of digitalization, the introduction of ever more screens in our lives and increasingly faster network technologies, a wide variety of alternative screens and sources of television content are trying to conquer a piece of the audiences' viewing time. This evolution calls for new kinds of services and has the potential to change the current television market. This paper assesses the evolution of over-the-top television services in Flanders, a cable dominant market in which several OTT TV services emerged during the past two years. By presenting an analysis of the market and the results of a large scale end-user survey (n: 1,269) we provide insights on the future of OTT TV and its impact on the current television ecosystem. In the Flemish market, both traditional broadcasters, the channels themselves and new market entrants are launching OTT TV services. These market evolutions are being related to user expectations and usage patterns in order to assess the challenges for future television. This also allows to make assumptions on future scenarios regarding so-called "cord- cutting" behaviour. Because of the high adoption of triple play bundles and fierce competition between the two dominant television distributors, a large scale video cord-cutting scenario is highly unlikely for the Flemish television market. Although OTT TV might gain importance, it will be hard for 'OTT TV-only' services to replace the traditional television distributors

Public-private partnerships in the healthcare sphere: legal models in Ukraine and foreign countries

The article discusses certain aspects of the legal regulation of public-private partnerships in the health sector in Ukraine and foreign countries. The subject of the study is the legislative acts of public-private partnerships in healthcare field, its types and directions for their implementation. The varieties of public-private partnership forms in healthcare field in foreign countries and Ukraine are clarified. Process of reforming the healthcare sector, introduction of standards and criteria of best practices of European countries on the issues of partnership under study in national legislation is appropriate and promising.The aim of the article is to disclose the features of legal regulation of public-private partnerships implementation in the healthcare field in foreign countries and Ukraine. The methodology of this work is based on a set of research methods. The comparative method was used to clarify the legal aspects of public-private partnerships in the healthcare field and the possibility of its use in Ukraine, to analyze indicators that determine the success of partnership projects in foreing countries. Using the method of theoretical analysis, systemic and analytical methods, the term of “public-private partnership in the healthcare field” was established, types of contracts, signs of public-private partnership, categories of such partnership models in world practice are given. Experience of the EU countries on public-private partnerships in healthcare field, the introduction of changes in healthcare management system in accordance with requirements of European law is positive for Ukraine

The Anesthesia Continuing Education Market and the Value Creation From a Sustainable Unified Platform

Practicing anesthesia professionals in the United States are all governed by various profession-specific regulatory bodies that mandate continuing education (CE) requirements. To date, no unified resource exists for anesthesia professionals (i.e., Anesthesiologists, Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists, and Anesthesiologist Assistants) to explore the CE offerings available within the marketplace. This study endeavored to convey the potential value of a unified anesthesia CE resource. It investigated how to cultivate a sustainable platform to potentially improve how anesthesia professionals search available CE offerings and to potentially enhance how anesthesia CE providers reach anesthesia professionals. This qualitative study was conducted utilizing an integrative review of the literature. The key concepts identified and investigated were network effect, segmentation, first to market, best of breed, search costs, transaction costs, minimally viable product, evolutionary phases of platforms, platform theory, platform business model, platform economy, and types of platforms. Inductive content analysis was chosen as the organizational method for the resultant qualitative data. The goal of the analysis was to create a conceptual, practical, and strategically applicable platform paradigm for the anesthesia CE marketplace driven by the insights and amalgamations from the literature. The analyzed concepts, dimensions, and indicators of platform successes and their applications potentially facilitate anesthesia professionals’ CE explorations and CE providers’ marketing efforts, as well as contextualize the overarching impacts and implications onto the anesthesia CE industry and beyond. The conclusion portrays these impacts and implications

SunTrust Portfolio Recommendations: Crummer Investment Management [2013]

We believe that the U.S. economy will continue growing modestly through 2013 and pick up speed in 2014. We have positioned the portfolio to take advantage of a slowly growing economy by slightly over-weighting the consumer discretionary, energy, industrials, technology, and health care sectors as these have traditionally benefited from recoveries. Accordingly, the consumer durables, financials, materials, telecommunications, and utilities sectors were under-weighted. Although the future is unusually cloudy, we reached this conclusion based on expected economic growth rates, favorable market P/E ratios and continued low interest rates