Quality evaluation in healthcare services based on the customer-provider relationship.

This paper identifies important changes in the Portuguese healthcare industry such as the ownership of healthcare providers, meaning that profit-oriented organisations are currently entering into an industry, which was traditionally dominated by public services. At the same time customers are changing their attitudes towards healthcare becoming much more concerned and demanding with health services. These changes are driving Portuguese healthcare private and public organisations to develop more marketing-oriented services. This paper recognises the importance of quality evaluation of healthcare services as a means to increase levels of customer satisfaction and organisational efficiency. Although evaluating healthcare services raises different questions from other services because of their complexity, ambiguity and heterogeneity, the paper develops a framework to healthcare evaluation based on the relationship between customers (patients, their relatives and citizens) and providers (managers, doctors, other technical staff, non-technical staff) having in mind four quality items (customer service orientation, financial performance, logistical functionality, and level of staff competence).Healthcare, customer service, quality evaluation, performance

Restoration of Poissonian Images Using Alternating Direction Optimization

Much research has been devoted to the problem of restoring Poissonian images, namely for medical and astronomical applications. However, the restoration of these images using state-of-the-art regularizers (such as those based on multiscale representations or total variation) is still an active research area, since the associated optimization problems are quite challenging. In this paper, we propose an approach to deconvolving Poissonian images, which is based on an alternating direction optimization method. The standard regularization (or maximum a posteriori) restoration criterion, which combines the Poisson log-likelihood with a (non-smooth) convex regularizer (log-prior), leads to hard optimization problems: the log-likelihood is non-quadratic and non-separable, the regularizer is non-smooth, and there is a non-negativity constraint. Using standard convex analysis tools, we present sufficient conditions for existence and uniqueness of solutions of these optimization problems, for several types of regularizers: total-variation, frame-based analysis, and frame-based synthesis. We attack these problems with an instance of the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM), which belongs to the family of augmented Lagrangian algorithms. We study sufficient conditions for convergence and show that these are satisfied, either under total-variation or frame-based (analysis and synthesis) regularization. The resulting algorithms are shown to outperform alternative state-of-the-art methods, both in terms of speed and restoration accuracy.Comment: 12 pages, 12 figures, 2 tables. Submitted to the IEEE Transactions on Image Processin

Multiplicative Noise Removal Using Variable Splitting and Constrained Optimization

Multiplicative noise (also known as speckle noise) models are central to the study of coherent imaging systems, such as synthetic aperture radar and sonar, and ultrasound and laser imaging. These models introduce two additional layers of difficulties with respect to the standard Gaussian additive noise scenario: (1) the noise is multiplied by (rather than added to) the original image; (2) the noise is not Gaussian, with Rayleigh and Gamma being commonly used densities. These two features of multiplicative noise models preclude the direct application of most state-of-the-art algorithms, which are designed for solving unconstrained optimization problems where the objective has two terms: a quadratic data term (log-likelihood), reflecting the additive and Gaussian nature of the noise, plus a convex (possibly nonsmooth) regularizer (e.g., a total variation or wavelet-based regularizer/prior). In this paper, we address these difficulties by: (1) converting the multiplicative model into an additive one by taking logarithms, as proposed by some other authors; (2) using variable splitting to obtain an equivalent constrained problem; and (3) dealing with this optimization problem using the augmented Lagrangian framework. A set of experiments shows that the proposed method, which we name MIDAL (multiplicative image denoising by augmented Lagrangian), yields state-of-the-art results both in terms of speed and denoising performance.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures, 2 tables. To appear in the IEEE Transactions on Image Processing

Ensino Superior e a Realidade Empresarial: em busca do adequado interposicionamento

O grande "divórcio" que tem caracterizado o interrelacionamento entre ensino superior e a realidade do jogo económico tem - salvo honrosas e escassíssimas excepções - resistido tenazmente quer a críticas quer às variadas tentativas dos "conselheiros matrimoniais" mais empenhados. Se, por um lado, a realidade empresarial se queixa do grande desajuste entre a formação com que os alunos saem das nossas escolas de ensino superior e as reais necessidades das empresas e demais organizações, por outro assiste-se à lamentação das escolas em relação à falta de interesse com que empresários e outros responsáveis encaram a sua participação - supostamente activa - nos conselhos consultivos e, de um modo geral, sempre que são chamados a sugerir, colaborar, ou seja, a contribuir para o almejado ajustamento de posicionamentos

O Tribunal da Propriedade Intelectual : breves notas atenientes à respectiva instituição, organização e funcionamento

Sumário: 1. Introdução; 2. Razões justificativas da instituição do Tribunal da Propriedade Intelectual; 3. Âmbito de jurisdição; 4. A repelente centralização; 5. Pretensões de celeridade e eficiência – o possível efeito boomerang; 6. A especialização dos juízes – um bolo por metade; 7. A inconveniente singularidade do caso português – um falso argumento; 8. Repercussões económicas expectáveis; 9. Conclusões

Celebratory Symposium C – Carbon: an Essential Element The Versatility of Carbon: Custom‑Made Nanostructures

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