Clinical Data Reuse or Secondary Use: Current Status and Potential Future Progress

Objective: To perform a review of recent research in clinical data reuse or secondary use, and envision future advances in this field. Methods: The review is based on a large literature search in MEDLINE (through PubMed), conference proceedings, and the ACM Digital Library, focusing only on research published between 2005 and early 2016. Each selected publication was reviewed by the authors, and a structured analysis and summarization of its content was developed. Results: The initial search produced 359 publications, reduced after a manual examination of abstracts and full publications. The following aspects of clinical data reuse are discussed: motivations and challenges, privacy and ethical concerns, data integration and interoperability, data models and terminologies, unstructured data reuse, structured data mining, clinical practice and research integration, and examples of clinical data reuse (quality measurement and learning healthcare systems). Conclusion: Reuse of clinical data is a fast-growing field recognized as essential to realize the potentials for high quality healthcare, improved healthcare management, reduced healthcare costs, population health management, and effective clinical research

U.S. and Canadian Livestock Prices: Market Integration and Trade Dependence

Cointegration of Canadian and U.S. livestock prices points to the existence of market integration in the period 1996:1 to 2004:12 even though the trade flows of livestock and beef products were non-existent for many months in 2003 and 2004 (suggesting market segmentation) due to livestock/beef import bans by both countries due to BSE. It was also determined that Canada's trade dependence in livestock and beef is cointegrated with Canadian and U.S. livestock prices. However, as the trade dependence variable is shocked, the effects on Canadian and U.S. prices are opposite although one would expect that in an integrated market the price responses to an exogenous shock would be similar or statistically identical. This result reinforces the case against the use of cointegration in determining presence (or absence) of market integration. Empirical results in this article raise some very difficult questions. Gains from trade are well documented. Yet, once a country is very trade dependent, the prices in it are much more vulnerable to exogenous shocks that reduce the trade flows. Canadian livestock prices plummeted and stayed low following the BSE incident and U.S. (and Japanese) import bans on Canadian livestock and beef. Given the long cycles and high sunk cost in the livestock and beef industry, immediate adjustment (reduction in production) for Canadian producers was difficult and always unlikely. Moreover, the possibility of import bans being lifted in the near future may have further shaped their expectations and prolonged the decisions on herd reduction. In the meanwhile, U.S. prices increased following Canada's trade dependence shock due to BSE and remained above the original long-run equilibrium price.Demand and Price Analysis, Livestock Production/Industries,

Imaging Informatics and the Human Brain Project: the Role of Structure, Review

(no abstract

Consolidated Markets, Brand Competition, and Orange Juice Prices

This paper examines how consolidation in the marketing system affects prices for orange juice. We isolated the pricing behavior of brand marketers, wholesalers, and retailers by observing the retail prices for specific orange juice products, including leading national brands and private label brands, in 54 U.S. markets over a 1-year period. The data provided little compelling evidence that consolidated markets engaged in non-competitive pricing behavior. Increased brand competition, particularly between private labels and leading national brands, did, however, appear to lower average market prices.consumer demographics, national brands, orange juice, price behavior, private labels, wholesaler concentration, retailer concentration, Demand and Price Analysis, Industrial Organization,

Globalisation and the Small Economy: The Case of the Netherlands

In this paper, we have examined the importance and implications of globalisation due to FDI for one particular small country: the Netherlands. Although it has limited resources and size, the Netherlands is home to the sixth largest outward FDI stock in the world, and also is one of the most important destinations for inward FDI activity. Its location advantages are, inter alia, a function of its de facto market size, given its central location within the EU, and its well developed infrastructure. Furthermore, the growing competitiveness of the service sector in the Netherlands plays a pivotal role. Other small economies can benefit from the Dutch experience, by investing in improving their competitiveness, since usually their activities are concentrated in only a few sectors. The need to maintain and upgrade their location advantages, by adopting new technologies and upgrading their created assets, is central to their survival.economics of technology ;

Green Logistics development and evaluation of the carbon footprint

Along with the worldwide climate changing, human activities and the rapid deterioration of the environment, Low-carbon economy in recent years become increasingly focus of attention in people's lives. The economic reform will gradually penetrate into the logistics system, modern logistics as a composite service industry, play a decisive role in the modern division of labor and cooperation under the social environment, it is a manufacturing! The important supporting business is an important bridge between production and consumption. The logistics industry is in a period of rapid development, the logistics process not only energy consumption demand is big, and the C02 emissions are also large. Coupled with the destruction of the human living environment, the greenhouse effect becomes more and more prominent, more the need of the development of green logistics, low carbon logistics. However, at home and abroad for most of the research of this aspect is still stay in the stage of qualitative analysis, quantitative analysis of the literature on energy consumption and C02 emission of less amount of logistics system. There are four objectives will be discussed. The first objective is the relevant literature on the green logistics is summarized, which lays the foundation for the research in this paper, green logistics. The second objective is the energy consumption and C02 calculation models were summarized, to provide reference for other scholars to conduct relevant research. The third objective is through statistical analysis, master the different modes of transport energy consumption and C02 emissions, and provide the basis for enterprises to choose the mode of transport. The fourth objective combining with specific examples, analyzed the carbon footprint of the logistics process instance modeling based on LCA.fi=Opinnäytetyö kokotekstinä PDF-muodossa.|en=Thesis fulltext in PDF format.|sv=Lärdomsprov tillgängligt som fulltext i PDF-format

The Role of Free/Libre and Open Source Software in Learning Health Systems

OBJECTIVE: To give an overview of the role of Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) in the context of secondary use of patient data to enable Learning Health Systems (LHSs). METHODS: We conducted an environmental scan of the academic and grey literature utilising the MedFLOSS database of open source systems in healthcare to inform a discussion of the role of open source in developing LHSs that reuse patient data for research and quality improvement. RESULTS: A wide range of FLOSS is identified that contributes to the information technology (IT) infrastructure of LHSs including operating systems, databases, frameworks, interoperability software, and mobile and web apps. The recent literature around the development and use of key clinical data management tools is also reviewed. CONCLUSIONS: FLOSS already plays a critical role in modern health IT infrastructure for the collection, storage, and analysis of patient data. The nature of FLOSS systems to be collaborative, modular, and modifiable may make open source approaches appropriate for building the digital infrastructure for a LHS.</p

THE SUPPLY CHAIN OF PORK: U.S. AND CHINA

Consumers in the United States consume 53 pounds of pork per capita per year. Forty percent of that pork enters the market by way of a contract with a packer or an integrated supply chain arrangement. Chinese consumers consume 37 pounds per capita. Eighty percent of that pork is produced in the backyards of millions of households all over the countryside. The supply chain that brings pork from hog to human is clearly different in these two countries, but both are moving in the same direction. In the United States, pork breeding produced leaner but heavier hogs by the late 1990's. This was largely in response to consumer demand for leaner meat and processors demand for less waste. Stricter sanitation regulation and quality control by food manufacturers led to a more integrated supply chain. Food companies contract with farmers for hogs with particular characteristics being demanded by consumers and retailers. Half of fresh pork and forty percent of processed pork is sold through foodservice establishments in the U.S. Consumers need for time-saving food is revealed by the portion of pork they eat away from home (42% of $35 billion sales) and by the mix of fresh (27%) and processed (73%) pork purchased in retail stores. The emphasis in the U.S. supply chain for pork is on delivering consistent quality of safe meat to consumers all the time. There is considerable research into new pork products. The top ten processing plants handle 43 percent of the total output. China is the largest pork producer in the world slaughtering 526.7 million hogs in 2000, over five times as many as the United States. Although commercial operations and specialized households are growing they provide only about twenty percent of all China's pork. Lower quality and sanitation standards prevent pork produced in backyards from entering the westernized/commercial supply chain but it is an important source of meat in the inland and rural areas of China. Coastal cities have more commercial and imported pork. For example, in Beijing sixty percent of production is from commercial farms. The advent of retail supermarkets and higher incomes in China foretell an increase in commercial pork operations. Direct foreign investment by key Western food companies and retailers are leading the standards for food safety and handling in the larger cities. Based on current pork consumption at various income levels, it is estimated that pork consumption will grow more than seven percent in Chinese cities and 1.5 percent in the countryside over the next ten years. This translates into an additional 12 million pounds of pork in 2011 with the urban consumption surpassing the rural consumption. The pork industry will be driven to emphasize quality, sanitation, and convenience in China as they already do in the United States. With China entering the World Trade Organization (WTO) more pork imports can be expected. Exports will depend on meeting the quality and safety standards of importing countries.Industrial Organization, Livestock Production/Industries,