The Increasing Global Market For Health Care: The Effect Of Emerging Technologies On Global Outsourcing & Offshoring Of Health Care Services

The use of outsourcing as a business management tool has a long history in the delivery of health and human services in the United States. But, the current price-pressured, highly-competitive U.S. health and human service market is also experiencing new competitive developments due to the introduction of new technologies and further use of lower-cost labor markets outside of the United States, commonly referred to as offshoring. This paper will explore the evolution of outsourcing and offshoring in health and human services and provide a model to analyze the technological factors that will likely contribute to a global transformation of the health and human services. Traditional thinking is that offshoring is usually limited to highly-repetitive, low-skill service tasks such as data entry and call center management. But, new research on the concept of offshoring posits that services that are labor intensive, information-based, codifiable, and/or highly transparent are candidates for technology-enabled outsourcing. A broader shift in labor models, from local to global, is likely to occur. Since these four characteristics apply to many of the professional functions in the health and human service field, it is imperative that health care executives understand the potential risks and opportunities of these emerging technologies. In particular, the authors will review the likely health service functions that will be subject to worker/labor competition through global outsourcing and suggest possible strategies for organizations in the field to address these new competitive threats

Building Strategic Business Partnerships With Software Vendors: A Best Practice Model For Behavioral Health & Social Service Organizations

Deployment of emerging technology holds great promise to improve the operation of organizations in the behavioral health and social service field.  New technology can reduce operating costs, improve service quality, and enable new service offerings, providing strategic advantage in an increasingly competitive market.  With increasingly strategic implications of technology in the field, it is important that managers understand the importance of choosing technology vendors that will be not just a supplier, but a strategic business partner.  Among the many technology vendors, strategic relationships with software vendors are key.  Software selection is an important and often underestimated process that holds the key to developing these strategic business partnerships.  In the current market, it is not unusual to find many software vendors offering a wealth of functionality in their applications at a wide range of price points. Traditionally, managers in the field have selected a software vendor with a simplistic value equation of the amount of functionality per dollar spent, with an assumption of  fixed useful life of the software product.   However, as the health and human service field has become more competitive and more dynamic, the ability to work with the software platform and the software vendor to collaboratively and quickly meet those needs is a key to maintaining strategic advantage.   This article outlines a ‘best practice’ in software selection process that builds the framework for creation of such a strategic partnership with a software vendor – a selection process that weighs software functionality and price, but adds the dimension of vendor responsiveness to the equation

Policy options for including LULUCF in the EU reduction commitment and policy instruments for increasing GHG mitigation efforts in the LULUCF and agriculture sectors

Land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) is an inventory sector defined by the Intergovern-mental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that covers anthropogenic emissions and removals of GHGs resulting from changes in terrestrial carbon stocks. The EU has committed unilaterally to reduce its overall greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to 20 % be-low 1990 levels by 2020, and to 30 % below 1990 levels if conditions are right

Superposition of macroscopic numbers of atoms and molecules

We theoretically examine photoassociation of a non-ideal Bose-Einstein condensate, focusing on evidence for a macroscopic superposition of atoms and molecules. This problem raises an interest because, rather than two states of a given object, an atom-molecule system is a seemingly impossible macroscopic superposition of different objects. Nevertheless, photoassociation enables coherent intraparticle conversion, and we thereby propose a viable scheme for creating a superposition of a macroscopic number of atoms with a macroscopic number of molecules.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figs, to appear in Phys. Rev. Let

Achieving consensus on minimum data items (including core outcome domains) for a longitudinal observational cohort study in rheumatoid arthritis

Objectives: To obtain consensus on minimum data items for an observational cohort study in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in the UK and to make available the process for similar studies and other rheumatic conditions. Methods: Individuals with a diverse range of expertise and backgrounds were invited to participate in a process to propose a minimal core dataset (MCD) for research studies, commissioned by Arthritis Research UK as part of the larger INBANK project. The group included patients and representatives from clinical and academic rheumatology, outcomes science, stratified medicine, health economics, national professional and academic bodies/ committees. A process was devised based on Outcome Measures in Rheumatology Clinical Trials (OMERACT) principles to review aims/objectives, definition of scope, identification of important research questions, and selection of key domains. Results: Following the initial multi-stakeholder meeting, subsequent teleconferences and email communications, consensus was obtained on: 1. Most important and relevant research questions; 2. Agreement on how the OMERACT Core Areas (life impact, pathophysiological manifestations, resource use and death) could form the basis of a MCD; 3. Consensus on 22 items for inclusion into a MCD. Workshops were undertaken for two essential items which required further exploration: work/social participation and co-morbidity. Conclusions: Consensus for proposed minimal data items for long-term observational cohort studies of RA in the UK posed novel challenges and opportunities, and was largely successful. Further work is needed to select instruments for two important items and to achieve compatibility with other UK national initiatives, and more widely across Europe

Curvature energy effects on strange quark matter nucleation at finite density

We consider the effects of the curvature energy term on thermal strange quark matter nucleation in dense neutron matter. Lower bounds on the temperature at which this process can take place are given and compared to those without the curvature term.Comment: PlainTex, 6 pp., IAG-USP Rep.5

Communicating climate risk: a toolkit

The Communicating Climate Risk toolkit draws together best practice on the effective communication of climate information from across STEM, social sciences, and arts and humanities. It provides users with insights, recommendations, and tools for all forms of climate-related communication and decision-making, and identifies open problems