Exploring and Developing Measurements for the Dimension of Contract Governance in Malaysia’s Public-Private Partnership Initiatives

Since 1983, Malaysia has been implementing public-private partnership (PPP) initiatives to acquire public infrastructure and services. These partnerships have been successful in improving public services and reducing public expenditure. Many researches have been conducted on the factors influencing the performance of PPP, including contract governance. However, due to the long duration and contractual obligations of PPP initiatives, there is still a lack of understanding about the influence of contract governance on the performance of these partnerships, highlighting a scarcity of study on contract governance in PPP contexts. Based on mono-method quantitative design, this study aims to develop a survey instrument to measure contract governance in PPP initiatives through Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA). A pilot study has been conducted with 115 respondents and the data been analyzed using the Principal Component with the Rotation extraction technique. The results showed that all five components of contract governance in the study had a Cronbach's alpha greater than 0.70, indicating a high level of consistency and reliability. The results of this research provide significant knowledge on the measurement of contract governance on PPP project performance to the body of literature on partnership performance and contract governance, therefore assisting concessionaires and policymakers. Managers overseeing PPP projects should possess the ability to improve the performance of their projects by comprehending the impact of contract. governance on project performance.

Effects of Contract Governance on the Relation of Partnership Critical Success Factors and the Performance of Malaysia Public-Private Partnership Initiatives

Much research has been carried out to discover partnership critical success factors that influence public-private partnership success. Since most public-private partnership projects are long-term in nature and include contractual arrangements, there is still a lot to learn about contract governance’s role in public-private partnership performance. Therefore, this study examines the effect of contract governance on the relationship between partnership critical success factors and partnership performance in Malaysia. Stakeholder Theory serves as the underpinning theory for this study. This study employed a quantitative method based on the positivist paradigm to distribute questionnaires. The information was collected from 261 contracting parties’ officials in Malaysian public-private partnership projects regulated by the Malaysian Public-Private Partnership Unit, and a stratified random sampling method was employed. The structural equation model analysis found that eight out of ten hypotheses were supported. According to this study, it has been established that contract governance has a direct favorable influence on partnership performance. However, it is also found that contract governance does not moderate the relationship between partnership critical success factors and partnership performance. Due to time constraints and the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, this study was from a cross-sectional viewpoint and adopted a quantitative methodology. The findings of this study are important in the contract governance and partnership performance literature, providing policymakers and concessionaires with new information on the impact of contract governance on public-private partnership project performance. Managers of public-private partnership projects should also be able to enhance their projects’ performance by understanding how contract governance influences the performance of their projects

Characteristics and outcomes of an international cohort of 600 000 hospitalized patients with COVID-19

Background: We describe demographic features, treatments and clinical outcomes in the International Severe Acute Respiratory and emerging Infection Consortium (ISARIC) COVID-19 cohort, one of the world's largest international, standardized data sets concerning hospitalized patients. Methods: The data set analysed includes COVID-19 patients hospitalized between January 2020 and January 2022 in 52 countries. We investigated how symptoms on admission, co-morbidities, risk factors and treatments varied by age, sex and other characteristics. We used Cox regression models to investigate associations between demographics, symptoms, co-morbidities and other factors with risk of death, admission to an intensive care unit (ICU) and invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV). Results: Data were available for 689 572 patients with laboratory-confirmed (91.1%) or clinically diagnosed (8.9%) SARS-CoV-2 infection from 52 countries. Age [adjusted hazard ratio per 10 years 1.49 (95% CI 1.48, 1.49)] and male sex [1.23 (1.21, 1.24)] were associated with a higher risk of death. Rates of admission to an ICU and use of IMV increased with age up to age 60 years then dropped. Symptoms, co-morbidities and treatments varied by age and had varied associations with clinical outcomes. The case-fatality ratio varied by country partly due to differences in the clinical characteristics of recruited patients and was on average 21.5%. Conclusions: Age was the strongest determinant of risk of death, with a ∼30-fold difference between the oldest and youngest groups; each of the co-morbidities included was associated with up to an almost 2-fold increase in risk. Smoking and obesity were also associated with a higher risk of death. The size of our international database and the standardized data collection method make this study a comprehensive international description of COVID-19 clinical features. Our findings may inform strategies that involve prioritization of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 who have a higher risk of death

The value of open-source clinical science in pandemic response: lessons from ISARIC

International audienc

ISARIC-COVID-19 dataset: A Prospective, Standardized, Global Dataset of Patients Hospitalized with COVID-19

The International Severe Acute Respiratory and Emerging Infection Consortium (ISARIC) COVID-19 dataset is one of the largest international databases of prospectively collected clinical data on people hospitalized with COVID-19. This dataset was compiled during the COVID-19 pandemic by a network of hospitals that collect data using the ISARIC-World Health Organization Clinical Characterization Protocol and data tools. The database includes data from more than 705,000 patients, collected in more than 60 countries and 1,500 centres worldwide. Patient data are available from acute hospital admissions with COVID-19 and outpatient follow-ups. The data include signs and symptoms, pre-existing comorbidities, vital signs, chronic and acute treatments, complications, dates of hospitalization and discharge, mortality, viral strains, vaccination status, and other data. Here, we present the dataset characteristics, explain its architecture and how to gain access, and provide tools to facilitate its use