Providing health checks as incentives to retain blood donors — evidence from two field experiments

The collection of blood given by donors has proven to be a substantial societal and a managerial challenge. Consequently, blood donation services seek for incentive mechanisms to retain donors. However, economic or material rewards might entail negative side effects such as motivational crowding out or even attracting “bad blood”. In an effort to increase the retention of established blood donors, we conducted two randomized field trials (N1 = 53,257, N2 = 31,522) in cooperation with the German Red Cross Blood Donation Service and tested the effectiveness of an incentive strategy that is directly related to the blood donation itself: offering a comprehensive blood health check. Contrary to previous related research, we found substantial positive effects of a comprehensive blood health check incentive on donation behavior. In addition, unlike previous studies, we examine effects of repeated exposure to this incentive and do not find any wearout effects. Considering the positive effect of this incentive on donor retention and the relative low cost for providing this service to donors, our findings suggest that offering comprehensive blood health check incentives is a viable and cost-efficient marketing strategy to increase the retention among previous donors even if offered over the longer run.Accepted manuscrip

Adaptation of hybrid five-phase ABS algorithms for experimental validation

International audienceThe Anti-lock Braking System (ABS) is the most important active safety system for passenger cars, but unfortunately the literature is not really precise about its description, stability and performance. This research improves a five-phase hybrid algorithm based on wheel deceleration and validate it on a tyre-in-the-loop laboratory facility. Five relevant effects are modelled so that the simulation matches the reality. Two methods to deal with the time delays are proposed. It can be verified that the limit cycle of the ABS encircle the optimal braking point without having any tyre parameter a priori known

Positron emission tomography of tumour [18F]fluoroestradiol uptake in patients with acquired hormone-resistant metastatic breast cancer prior to oestradiol therapy

Purpose Whereas anti-oestrogen therapy is widely applied to treat oestrogen receptor (ER) positive breast cancer, paradoxically, oestrogens can also induce tumour regression. Upregulation of ER expression is a marker for oestrogen hypersensitivity. We, therefore, performed an exploratory study to evaluate positron emission tomography (PET) with the tracer 16 alpha-[F-18] fluoro-17 beta-oestradiol (F-18-FES) as potential marker to select breast cancer patients for oestradiol therapy. Methods Eligible patients had acquired endocrine-resistant metastatic breast cancer that progressed after >= 2 lines of endocrine therapy. All patients had prior ER-positive histology. Treatment consisted of oestradiol 2 mg, three times daily, orally. Patients underwent F-18-FES-PET/CT imaging at baseline. Tumour F-18-FES-uptake was quantified for a maximum of 20 lesions and expressed as maximum standardised uptake value (SUVmax). CT-scan was repeated every 3 months to evaluate treatment response. Clinical benefit was defined as time to radiologic or clinical progression >= 24 weeks. Results F-18-FES uptake, quantified for 255 lesions in 19 patients, varied greatly between lesions (median 2.8; range 0.6-24.3) and between patients (median 2.5; range 1.1-15.5). Seven (37 %) patients experienced clinical benefit of oestrogen therapy, eight progressed (PD), and four were non-evaluable due to side effects. The positive and negative predictive value PPV/NPV) of F-18-FES-PET for response to treatment were 60 % (95 % CI: 31-83 %) and 80 % (95 % CI: 38-96 %), respectively, using SUVmax >1.5. Conclusion F-18-FES-PET may aid identification of patients with acquired antihormone resistant breast cancer that are unlikely to benefit from oestradiol therapy