Restructuring the German Outpatient Health Care System: An Economic and IT Perspective

Among other proposals to reform the German outpatient health care system the establishment of networks of cooperating physicians (doctors’ networks) has found high and controversial consideration in recent years. In this paper we analyze doctors’ networks both from an economic perspective, particularly with a view on network strategies, and the perspective of supporting information technologies. Our main conclusions are that the viability of doctors’ networks critically depends on trust-building mechanisms like the restriction of the network in size and complexity and the application of fair profit allocation rules. Concerning information technology the implementation and use of highly integrated interorganizational systems appears most promising. We propose an architecture of such systems. It integrates information technology along the medical, the business and the communication systems dimension and serves as a vehicle for efficient use of shared patient data and other network resources, knowledge creation, fair profit allocation, improved business control and a high level of integrity vis-a-vis the patient

ASDEX Upgrades New Plasma Control Scheme

ASDEX Upgrade is a medium sized tokamak experiment investigating highly shaped plasma and advanced scenarios to be extrapolated for ITER. Eleven independent magnetic coils allow for proper shaping and plasma current control. For plasma heating and current drive eight NBI beam lines, two ICRH antenna pairs and four ECRH gyrotrons are available. Five channels for controlling gas valves and a pellet injector serve for fuelling. All actuators are driven by a digital discharge control system. One basic enhancement of the latest generation is a unified framework for all feedforward and feedback control tasks in a discharge. The framework consists of two layers. The core layer implements wind-up safe feedback controllers with a collection of overlayed output limitations. Each controller is dynamically switchable in references, controlled variables, control law and control parameters via a control mode. The coordination layer implements intelligent discharge protection or optimisation algorithms which synchronously can change control modes and dynamically can generate reference waveforms adapted to the discharge's state and goal. The core layer comprises the backbone of plasma control. Current, shape, heating and fuel control all use a library of highly configurable single- and multivalriable control laws. P, PI and PID controllers are standard components but state space and sliding mode policies can easily be supplemented, too. Likewise, a broad selection of output limiters is available in the library. It ranges from constant values to rate limiters, and multi-signal dependent polynomial characteristics. The controller is aware of any output limitation and can take anti-wind-up measures. Furthermore, a feedforward policy allows to tune the behaviour upon mode transitions, like smooth adaptation or freezing the last output. With the coordination layer, tasks like marfe protection, power exhaust protection and soft pulse termination are accomplished. These specialised algorithms are plugged into the framework using a common interface. The framework approach easily allows for further extensions and opens a door for future experimental investigations

Marketing and agriculture : how to be successful in the crop protection

From the beginning of the 1980s I worked as a marketing and sales manager of the agricultural supply industry in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. After the opening of the Iron Curtain in 1990 I was asked, beginning with the University of Prague, to teach the marketing philosophy of the Western world to students from universities of the former COMECON. The following presentation provides the basic information of these marketing seminars and should also serve as a checklist for future marketing plans in the field of crop protection.Seit Anfang der 1980er Jahre war ich als Marketing und Vertriebsleiter der landwirtschaftlichen Zulieferindustrie verstärkt in Osteuropa und Zentralasien tätig. Nach der Öffnung des Eisernen Vorhangs im Jahr 1990 wurde ich gebeten, beginnend mit der Universität Prag, die Marketing Philosophie der westlichen Welt Studenten an Universitäten des früheren COMECON zu vermitteln. Die nachfolgende Darstellung vermittelt die Grundaussagen dieser Marketing Seminare, sie soll gleichzeitig als Checkliste für künftige Marketingpläne im Bereich Pflanzenschutz dienen

The ASDEX Upgrade UTDC and DIO cards - A family of PCI/cPCI devices for real-time DAQ under Solaris

A Universal Time to Digital Converter (UTDC) and a Digital I/O (DIO) card have been built to purpose for the new ASDEX Upgrade control system, the Thomson Scattering diagnostic, a renovation of the Magnetic Measurement, and a couple of other diagnostics requiring renewed timing or real-time features. The salient features of these cards will be presented, and we will show how synergy in hardware and software development could be achieved. Examples of real-life applications in diagnostics will be given. Measurements of the real-time behaviour of those diagnostics show a low jitter of the Solaris operating system and highly reliable function under moderate real-time conditions. Future extension of the usability of this family of cards will be described as an outlook. Topic: Diagnostic Control and Data Acquisitio