Systematic review of hospital-wide complication registries

Background: An institutional registry covering all surgical specialties could be an implementation tool in quality benchmarking between hospitals and aid determination of their cost-effectiveness. The objective of this systematic literature review was to evaluate original articles on existing prospective surgical registries that can be used by single institutions across surgical specialties.Method: A systematic review of the literature using PRISMA guidelines was conducted for articles focusing on hospital-wide surgical registries. Single-specialty retrospective registries, non-defined outcome measures or system protocols, and studies not in English were excluded.Results: Five articles were included for analysis. Evaluation of the articles revealed wide methodological heterogeneity in the classification and categorization of complications and data collection methods.Conclusion: Ideal surgical quality monitoring systems should be real-time, contain patient-related risk factors, and encompass all surgical specialties. At present, such institutional registries are rarely reported and no consensus exists on their standard definitions and methodology

Value-Chain Wide Food Waste Management: A Systematic Literature Review

© 2019, Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The agriculture value chain, from farm to fork, has received enormous attention because of its key role in achieving United Nations Global Challenges Goals. Food waste occurs in many different forms and at all stages of the food value chain, it has become a worldwide issue that requires urgent actions. However, the management of food waste has been traditionally segmented and in an isolated manner. This paper reviews existing work that has been done on food waste management in literature by taking a holistic approach, in order to identify the causes of food waste, food waste prevention strategies, and elicit recommendations for future work. A five step systematic literature review has been adopted for a thorough examination of the existing research on the topic and new insights have been obtained. The findings suggest that the main sources of food waste include food overproduction and surplus, food waste caused by processing, logistical inconsistencies, and households. Main food waste prevention strategies have been revealed in this paper include policy solutions, packaging solutions, date-labelling solutions, logistics solutions, changing consumers’ behaviours, and reuse and redistribution solutions. Future research directions such as using value chain models to reduce food waste and forecasting food waste have been identified in this paper. This study makes a contribution to the extant literature in the field of food waste management by discovering main causes of food waste in the value chain and eliciting prevention strategies that can be used to reduce/eliminate relevant food waste

Contracting outsourced services with collaborative key performance indicators

While service outsourcing may benefit from the application of performance‐based contracts (PBCs), the implementation of such contracts is usually challenging. Service performance is often not only dependent on supplier effort but also on the behavior of the buying firm. Existing research on performance‐based contracting provides very limited understanding on how this challenge may be overcome. This article describes a design science research project that develops a novel approach to buyer–supplier contracting, using collaborative key performance indicators (KPIs). Collaborative KPIs evaluate and reward not only the supplier contribution to customer performance but also the customer's behavior to enable this. In this way, performance‐based contracting can also be applied to settings where supplier and customer activities are interdependent, while traditional contracting theories suggest that output controls are not effective under such conditions. In the collaborative KPI contracting process, indicators measure both supplier and customer (buying firm) performance and promote collaboration by being defined through a collaborative process and by focusing on end‐of‐process indicators. The article discusses the original case setting of a telecommunication service provider experiencing critical problems in outsourcing IT services. The initial intervention implementing this contracting approach produced substantial improvements, both in performance and in the relationship between buyer and supplier. Subsequently, the approach was tested and evaluated in two other settings, resulting in a set of actionable propositions on the efficacy of collaborative KPI contracting. Our study demonstrates how defining, monitoring, and incentivizing the performance of specific processes at the buying firm can help alleviate the limitations of traditional performance‐based contracting when the supplier's liability for service performance is difficult to verify

Inhibition of phosphatase and tensin homologue (PTEN) in human ovary in vitro results in increased activation of primordial follicles but compromises development of growing follicles

In the mammalian ovary a small number of follicles are steadily recruited from the quiescent pool to undergo development. Follicle loss, maintenance and growth are strictly controlled by complex molecular interactions including the phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K)-protein kinase B (Akt) signalling pathway. Stimulation of PI3K promotes phosphorylation of Akt resulting in follicle survival and activation of growth whereas this pathway is suppressed by the actions of the phosphatase and tensin homologue (PTEN). The aim of this study was to determine the effect of dipotassium bisperoxo(5-hydroxypyridine-2-carboxyl)oxovanadate (bpV), a reversible inhibitor of PTEN, on the activation, survival and development of human ovarian follicles in vitro. Biopsied ovarian tissue fragments were obtained from 17 women aged 23–46 years and exposed to 1 µM bpV(HOpic) (n = 146) or control medium (n = 128) for 24 h. Media were then replaced with control medium and all tissue incubated for a further 5 days. Ovarian tissue from each treatment group was fixed after the initial 24 h culture period and phosphorylated Akt was quantified by western blotting. After 6 days incubation all tissue fragments were inspected under light microscopy and any secondary follicles ≥100 µm isolated. Isolated follicles were cultured individually in control medium supplemented with 100 ng/ml recombinant human activin A. Tissue fragments without follicles suitable for isolation were fixed and processed for histological and immunohistochemical analysis. During 6 days culture, follicle activation occurred in tissue samples from both treatment groups but with significantly more follicles progressing to the secondary stage of development in the presence of 1 µM bpV(HOpic) compared with control (31 versus 16%; P < 0.05). Increased activation was associated with increased Akt phosphorylation and increased nuclear export of FOXO3. However isolated and cultured follicles that had been exposed to bpV(HOpic) showed limited growth and reduced survival compared with follicles from control fragments (P < 0.05). This study demonstrates that inhibition of PTEN with bpV(HOpic) affects human ovarian follicle development by promoting the initiation of follicle growth and development to the secondary stage, as in rodent species, but severely compromises the survival of isolated secondary follicles

Potential biological role of poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) in male gametes

Maintaining the integrity of sperm DNA is vital to reproduction and male fertility. Sperm contain a number of molecules and pathways for the repair of base excision, base mismatches and DNA strand breaks. The presence of Poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP), a DNA repair enzyme, and its homologues has recently been shown in male germ cells, specifically during stage VII of spermatogenesis. High PARP expression has been reported in mature spermatozoa and in proven fertile men. Whenever there are strand breaks in sperm DNA due to oxidative stress, chromatin remodeling or cell death, PARP is activated. However, the cleavage of PARP by caspase-3 inactivates it and inhibits PARP's DNA-repairing abilities. Therefore, cleaved PARP (cPARP) may be considered a marker of apoptosis. The presence of higher levels of cPARP in sperm of infertile men adds a new proof for the correlation between apoptosis and male infertility. This review describes the possible biological significance of PARP in mammalian cells with the focus on male reproduction. The review elaborates on the role played by PARP during spermatogenesis, sperm maturation in ejaculated spermatozoa and the potential role of PARP as new marker of sperm damage. PARP could provide new strategies to preserve fertility in cancer patients subjected to genotoxic stresses and may be a key to better male reproductive health

Planning Nervousness in Product Segmentation: Literature Review and Research Agenda

Part 2: Knowledge Discovery and SharingInternational audienceDifferentiated planning is one of the means for today’s companies to accommodate the increasing needs for product variety, delivery responsiveness, and cost-efficiency. Even though, product segmentation is the foundation for such planning, planning nervousness has not yet been addressed from this perspective. This paper seeks to establish a relation between planning nervousness and segmentation by analyzing the current body of literature with the objective of identifying overlaps between the two areas. The literature characteristics are assessed and directions for future research are provided

Planning Nervousness in Product Segmentation:Empirical Analysis of Decision Parameters

Part 2: Knowledge Discovery and SharingInternational audiencePrevious research presents a theoretical relation between planning nervousness and product segmentation and indicates that the concept should be subject to further research. This paper seeks to empirically confirm this relation, by developing hypotheses and testing these on a specific case. Three hypotheses related to historical planning data, planning frequency, and demand variability are developed and tested using data from three-echelons in a case company. A key finding is a confirmation of the relationship, providing operational tools that can assist organizations in battling planning nervousness

Logistical Causes of Food Waste:A Case Study of a Norwegian Distribution Chain of Chilled Food Products

Part 1: Knowledge Discovery and SharingInternational audienceThis study discusses logistical planning and handling activities contributing to food waste in the food distribution chain of chilled products with fixed shelf life and with an age dependent deterioration rate. The study has exploratory character and all the findings are based on the case study investigation from six Norwegian companies. The causes of food waste as identified in the case companies are grouped into four areas, namely planning decisions, data utilisation, execution of plan, and damaged products. Quantitative data indicates that for chilled products with fixed shelf life, logistical planning seems to have higher impact on financial losses from food waste than physical handling