Consumer Protection in Ecommerce: A case Study of Egypt

This paper examines electronic contract regulation in the context of business-to-consumer transactions. The technological advancement and cross-border nature of e-commerce have posed significant challenges to the Egyptian legal framework highlighting the limitations of general commercial contract rules with regards to electronic contracts. This thesis argues that access to the courts is hindered by restrictive terms in the electronic contracts over which the Egyptian law has no jurisdictional power. Accordingly, private institutions set the rules in the e-contracts and enforce them through private methods leaving no room for state intervention to ensure the protection of consumers. Hence, the application of national consumer law is impaired by the private practices that shape the transaction to their best business ends. Consumer protection is essential to promote access to the online market since it serves as a safety valve in face of the electronic risks. So, to increase the level of protection for consumers conducting e-transactions, the Egyptian legislator should adopt reforms to control the private mechanism to ensure consumer rights’ application instead of informal negotiations to satisfy consumer’s problems

Patient Experience Informs Health Care Strategies in Irish Hospitals

Patients are central to health care facilities and institutions; therefore, a dire need arises to include feedback of their experience in the decision-making process. Patient experience is increasingly recognised as one of the three pillars of quality in healthcare alongside clinical effectiveness and patient safety. A comprehensive literature review (more than 2500 peer-reviewed articles) has identified five key frameworks for patient experience including: UK Picker Institute Principles and US H-CAHPS. The frameworks have enabled the identification of a potential range of patient experience dimensions and helped in grouping them into nine categories. However, there are still opportunities to address research gaps in developing a unified index to represent patient experience, and offering a practical framework to inform quality improvement strategies in hospitals. An extensive exploratory study is developed to complement the literature review. This study aims to confirm the importance of the identified nine dimensions from patients’ views, explore staff perceptions of patient experience, then compare patients’ views and staff’s perceptions. Semistructured interviews with 77 participants (26 senior staff members and 51patients) across three major acute Irish hospitals are conducted. Five important dimensions are highlighted from patients’ responses such as: staff communication and being treated with respect. While dimensions such as: continuity of care and involving family members are identified as less important. While staff in this study perceive dimensions such as quicker access to care and informing the patient with their status updates as more significant in shaping the patient experience. Both the exploratory study and literature review outcomes have contributed to the design of a patient experience questionnaire which examine dimensions that matter most to patient experience. The questionnaire is included as a component of a multi-method framework that integrated data analytics, simulation modelling, and optimisation. With an ultimate objective to improve patient experience, the proposed framework has been piloted in an Emergency Department of one of the leading and busiest university hospitals in Dublin. Fifty-eight patients responded to the questionnaire and their responses are analysed using a Partial Least Squares (PLS) model. PLS results have identified access to care as a negative predictor to patient experience. Improvement strategies such as increasing the internal capacity of the department are proposed by the management team to improve the Length of Stay (LOS) and provide better access to care. To examine and assess the impact of proposed strategies on LOS, a simulation model has complemented the solution framework. Results have showed that internal capacity of an ED has no direct impact on LOS and does not act as a performance constraint. However, other factors such as increasing downstream department’s capacity and the staffing levels can lead to a reduction in LOS (up to 25%)

Optimization of Resources to Improve Patient Experience in the New Emergency Department of Mater Hospital Dublin

Healthcare systems globally are facing capacity issues due to the increased demand of health services, the high cost of resources and the level of quality anticipated of service providers. Emergency Departments (ED) are the most pressurized unit in healthcare systems due to uncertainty in demand and limited resources allocated. Mater Hospital (one of leading hospitals) in Dublin has built a new (state-of-the-art) unit for ED yet faced an issue in resourcing the unit to optimize performance. This paper presents an integrated solution to optimize the capacity of the new ED before opening to public and examine improvement interventions in the ED area. This solution provides ED management with a tool that can contribute significantly in enhancing patient experience by reducing the waiting time from 21 hours to 6 hours while achieving utilization below the 80% burn-out threshold. The model is recommended by Health Service Executives to be used national wide

Assabeyya : idiome de détresse : exploration anthropologique de la détresse psychologique de femmes dans le Caire contemporain

Cette recherche s’est fixé de nombreux objectifs dont le principal est celui d’explorer ‘assabeyya afin de découvrir si c'est un idiome de détresse exprimé et manifesté par de nombreuses femmes égyptiennes. Elle a ensuite cherché à savoir si ‘assabeyya est l'expression d'une souffrance émotionnelle, exprimée à travers ‘les nerfs’, et secondaire à l'exposition à de nombreux événements traumatiques violents (violence directe ou violence indirecte comme violence structurelle et symbolique / culturelle) comme dans nervios. Le troisième objectif a été de voir s'il existe une biomédicalisation de cette souffrance sociale représentée par ‘assabeyya, et enfin, le dernier objectif a été de découvrir si ‘assabeyya et trouble de la personnalité limite (TPL) sont en fait liés et s'ils résultent tous deux des conséquences traumatiques de l'exposition des femmes égyptiennes à ces nombreuses sources de violence. Des entretiens approfondis inspirés du modèle explicatif de la maladie ont été mis en place pour recueillir des informations, notamment sur le type de souffrance et l'exposition à la violence de femmes d'une banlieue du Caire (patientes psychiatriques et non psychiatriques). La présence de symptômes caractéristiques du TPL et de l’état de stress post-traumatique complexe (ESPT) a aussi été recherchée. Les entretiens se sont également déroulés auprès de professionnels de la santé mentale et de la santé plus globalement, ainsi qu’auprès de personnes ressources issues de la même communauté. L’analyse des données a permis tout d’abord de confirmer les hypothèses avancées puis de dépeindre une vision synthétique de ‘assabeyya, vision gravitant autour de la notion clé d’assujettissement. La relation de l’assujettissement à ‘assabeyya a été analysée selon l’approche tridimensionnelle de disease, illness et sickness (Kleinman et al. 1980, 2006) ainsi que les mécanismes de coping que cet assujettissement induit et les types d’agencéité qu’il inspire, dont la victimcy (Honwana 2000). Assujettissement et ‘assabeyya ont été ensuite abordés, selon l’approche ethnopsychiatrique à travers les concepts de ‘assabeyya khaldunienne (Ibn Khaldun 1986), d’aliénation et d’anomie (Durkheim 1960) ; et ethnopsychanalytique (Freud 1914-1916 ; 1961 ; Butler 1997). Enfin une approche existentielle a tenté d’explorer la relation de ‘assabeyya à l’assujettissement donnant ainsi à ‘assabeyya une portée qui dépasse le domaine de l’anthropologie et de la psychiatrie pour atteindre ceux de la politique et de la philosophie.This research has set many objectives, the main one was to explore 'assabeyya in order to discover if it is an idiom of distress expressed and manifested by many Egyptian women. The research investigated then whether ‘assabeyya is the expression of an emotional suffering, expressed through ‘nerves', secondary to exposure to many violent traumatic events (direct or indirect violence as structural and symbolic /cultural violence) as in nervios, nevra, nervos or even nerves. The third objective was to see if there is a biomedicalization of this social suffering represented by ‘assabeyya, and finally the last objective was to discover if ‘assabeyya and borderline personality disorder (BPD) are in fact related resulting both from the traumatic consequences of Egyptian women's exposure to these numerous sources of violence. In-depth interviews based on the explanatory model of the disease were set in order to gather information on the type of suffering and exposure to violence of women in a Cairo suburb, who were psychiatric and non-psychiatric patients. The presence of characteristic symptoms of BPD and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) was also investigated. In addition, interviews were conducted with mental health professionals and more broadly with health professionals, as well as with resource persons from the same community. The analysis of the data allowed, first, to confirm the hypotheses put forward, and then to depict a synthetic vision of ‘assabeyya, a vision revolving around the key notion of subjugation. The relationship between subjugation and ‘assabeyya has been analyzed according to the three-dimensional approach of disease, illness and sickness (Kleinman et al., 1980, 2006), along with the coping mechanisms induced by this subjugation and the types of agency it inspires, including victimcy (Honwana 2000). Subjection and ‘assabeyya were then analyzed according to the ethnopsychiatric approach through the concepts of Khaldunian ‘assabeyya (Ibn Khaldun 1986), alienation and anomie (Durkheim 1960); and through the ethnopsychanalytic one (Freud 1914-1916, 1961; Butler 1997). Finally, an existential approach has attempted to explore the relation of ‘assabeyya to subjugation, providing ‘assabeyya with a scope beyond the field of anthropology and psychiatry, to reach those of politics and philosophy

Human–Computer Interaction and Participation in Software Crowdsourcing

Improvements in communication and networking technologies have transformed people’s lives and organizations’ activities. Web 2.0 innovation has provided a variety of hybridized applications and tools that have changed enterprises’ functional and communication processes. People use numerous platforms to broaden their social contacts, select items, execute duties, and learn new things. Context: Crowdsourcing is an internet-enabled problem-solving strategy that utilizes human–computer interaction to leverage the expertise of people to achieve business goals. In crowdsourcing approaches, three main entities work in collaboration to solve various problems. These entities are requestors (job providers), platforms, and online users. Tasks are announced by requestors on crowdsourcing platforms, and online users, after passing initial screening, are allowed to work on these tasks. Crowds participate to achieve various rewards. Motivation: Crowdsourcing is gaining importance as an alternate outsourcing approach in the software engineering industry. Crowdsourcing application development involves complicated tasks that vary considerably from the micro-tasks available on platforms such as Amazon Mechanical Turk. To obtain the tangible opportunities of crowdsourcing in the realm of software development, corporations should first grasp how this technique works, what problems occur, and what factors might influence community involvement and co-creation. Online communities have become more popular recently with the rise in crowdsourcing platforms. These communities concentrate on specific problems and help people with solving and managing these problems. Objectives: We set three main goals to research crowd interaction: (1) find the appropriate characteristics of social crowd utilized for effective software crowdsourcing, (2) highlight the motivation of a crowd for virtual tasks, and (3) evaluate primary participation reasons by assessing various crowds using Fuzzy AHP and TOPSIS method. Conclusion: We developed a decision support system to examine the appropriate reasons of crowd participation in crowdsourcing. Rewards and employments were evaluated as the primary motives of crowds for accomplishing tasks on crowdsourcing platforms, knowledge sharing was evaluated as the third reason, ranking was the fourth, competency was the fifth, socialization was sixth, and source of inspiration was the seventh.Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University Researchers Supporting - Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Project number (PNURSP2023TR140)

Host mobility key management in dynamic secure group communication

The key management has a fundamental role in securing group communications taking place over vast and unprotected networks. It is concerned with the distribution and update of the keying materials whenever any changes occur in the group membership. Wireless mobile environments enable members to move freely within the networks, which causes more difficulty to design efficient and scalable key management protocols. This is partly because both member location dynamic and group membership dynamic must be managed concurrently, which may lead to significant rekeying overhead. This paper presents a hierarchical group key management scheme taking the mobility of members into consideration intended for wireless mobile environments. The proposed scheme supports the mobility of members across wireless mobile environments while remaining in the group session with minimum rekeying transmission overhead. Furthermore, the proposed scheme alleviates 1-affect-n phenomenon, single point of failure, and signaling load caused by moving members at the core network. Simulation results shows that the scheme surpasses other existing efforts in terms of communication overhead and affected members. The security requirements studies also show the backward and forward secrecy is preserved in the proposed scheme even though the members move between areas

AN INTEGRATED APPROACH OF MULTI-OBJECTIVE OPTIMIZATION MODEL FOR EVALUATING NEW SUPPORTING PROGRAM IN IRISH HOSPITALS

Hospitals are witnessing an inexorable growth in emergency admissions, which results in overcrowding and a poorer patient experience. The Acute Medicine Program (AMP) is one of the programs developed by the Irish health authority aimed at improving patient experience. To review the AMP intervention, this study applies a model that integrates three analytical approaches: simulation, multivariate factor analysis and multi-objective optimization. The simulation identified 14 different factors affecting five responses that were used to develop a Design of Experiments (DoE). Multivariate factor analysis used the DoE to determine the factors creating ‘bottlenecks’, such as downstream resources. The multi-objective optimization model, based on the Simulated Annealing approach, is applied to support management decisions on optimizing key parameters affecting the treatment journey of patients. A Pareto set of solutions found that an increase in downstream capacity and unit staff can lead to a 25% decrease at least in the patient’s experience time