Alcohol and injuries in the accident and emergency department: a national perspective.

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of alcohol and injuries, with a specific focus in the A & E Departments in acute hospitals. The six hospitals were selected to achieve a wide geographic and demographic distribution across the country - Mater Misercordiae University Hospital in Dublin , Beaumont Hospital in Dublin, University College Hospital Galway, Sligo General Hospital, Letterkenny General Hospital and Waterford Regional Hospital. Data was collected using a standard 25 minute questionnaire, which included the type and cause of the presenting injury, drinking in the six hours prior to the injury, quantity and frequency of usual drinking habits, frequency of high consumption times during the last year, indicators of alcohol problems and alcohol dependency and demographic characteristics

A Rating Bureau Service for Next Generation IP Services

The marked increase of IP-based services has resulted in the need for a more flexible rating process than the present 'flat-rate' accounting approach. This paper presents the design and development of a Rating Bureau Service for the IP telecommunications environment. It illustrates the architecture, information model, technologies, and standards used in development of the system, as well as expounding upon some of the key implementation goals. In the proposed rating environment, flexibility is achieved by decoupling the charging algorithm and the core rating system. Hence, algorithms can be changed independently of the core system, avoiding the need to recode and recompile. Algorithms can be swapped in and out of the system during rating, allowing a potentially limitless range of services to be rated by equal numbers of tailored algorithms. All algorithms in the system are spreadsheet-based. This approach moves the modelling and construction of algorithms from the programming domain into the business design arena. Anyone with a working knowledge of spreadsheets can effortlessly construct/update these arbitrarily complex charging algorithms. This paper focuses on the development of a fixed line call charging algorithm that may be employed by a large telecommunications company

Workbook Approach to Algorithm Design and Service Accounting in a Component Orientated Environment

As the shift towards the next generation of services runs its course, the emphasis within accounting for such services has moved towards robust and flexible components. An accounting architecture with the ability to scale, based on the foundation of a solid core of rating components, incorporating transaction management, object pooling and queuing is presented. Using the workbook approach to algorithm modelling is a logfical option that allows for the decoupling of the algorthm from the architecture of the rating component. Decoupling the algorithm, allows for the design of core functionality that will rate for any service based on the concept of "pluggable" algorithms for each respective service