Healthcare Information and the Utilization of Pap-smear Testing amongst Taiwanese Women

This study is to investigate the determinants of healthcare information amongst women in Taiwan aged between 25 and 69 years, and the association with cervical cancer screening.A two-stage estimation model was adopted for this investigation. In the first stage, the determinants of healthcare information were estimated by the OLS method, with the predicted values of the healthcare information then being linked to the decision to undergo Pap-smear testing. The nationwide survey dataset was obtained from the 2002‘Health Promotion of Knowledge, Attitudes and Practice' (HPKAP) in Taiwan, provided by the Bureau of Health Promotion. A total of 9,106 individuals were included in the analysis. The results reveal that the variations in the level of healthcare information are an important contributory factor to the utilization of cervical cancer screening in Taiwan. Therefore, in addition to providing free screening under the NHI, it is important for the healthcare authorities to place greater effort into strengthening the knowledge and information on cervical cancer screening and Pap-smear testing, for those who are currently less informed, so as to enhance the overall efficiency of the screening program.Health information; Pap-smear testing; Cervical cancer; National Health Insurance; Taiwan

FPGA-Based Cascade Support Vector Machine with Integrated Training

Machine learning algorithms allow us to reason about and analyze large amounts of data. The support vector machine (SVM) is one popular learning algorithm, which has been applied to a broad range of applications. To this end, hardware-based SVM processors are very appealing due to their improved runtime and energy efficiency. This research proposes an FPGA-based parallel support vector machine processor, which is capable of processing multi-dimensional data sets. The proposed FPGA SVM is based upon the cascade SVM algorithm, which is leveraged to allow efficient parallel processing of data on the FPGA platform, leading to significant processing efficiency

Patient satisfaction evaluations in different clinic care models: Care stratification under a national demonstration project

[[abstract]]Primary Community Care Networks (PCCNs) were the product of primary care health reform in Taiwan. Under the PCCN intervened nationwide as a demonstration project, there were three types of service contexts for clinic patients: (1) member patients in PCCN clinics: (2) non-member patients in PCCN clinics; and (3) patients in non-PCCN clinics. A multi-site, cross-sectional validated survey of 3143 outpatients receiving care in clinics was conducted to investigate quality of care delivered to these three distinct clinic patients. It revealed that member patients indicated a higher level of satisfaction with the care quality of several physician-patient relationships and an increased willingness to recommend their clinics over non-member patients in PCCN clinics. However, no differences were found in the care quality evaluation measures between PCCN member patients and non-PCCN patients. Health policy implications were discussed for primary health reforms in clinic service contexts in this study. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

The role of leader behaviors in hospital-based emergency departments’ unit performance and employee work satisfaction

[[abstract]]The role of the leader of a medical unit has evolved over time to expand from simply a medical role to a more managerial one. This study aimed to explore how the behavior of a hospital-based emergency department's (ED's) leader might be related to ED unit performance and ED employees' work satisfaction. One hundred and twelve hospital-based EDs in Taiwan were studied: 10 in medical centers, 32 in regional hospitals, and 70 in district hospitals. Three instruments were designed to assess leader behaviors, unit performance and employee satisfaction in these hospital-based EDs. A mail survey revealed that task-oriented leader behavior was positively related to ED unit performance. Both task- and employee-oriented leader behaviors were found to be positively related to ED nurses' work satisfaction. However, leader behaviors were not shown to be related to ED physicians' work satisfaction at a statistically significant level. Some ED organizational characteristics, however, namely departmentalization and hospital accreditation level, were found to be related to ED physicians' work satisfaction

The influence of expertise and experimental paradigms on the visual behavior of tennis athletes in returning a serve

To return a serve, one must pick up information from the server’s kinematics and anticipate the ball trajectory. Although the perceptual requirements are important, the literature diverges in terms of the differences between experts and novices as well as the importance of the experimental paradigm (in-situ vs. video-based) for the results. This study aimed to address both concerns. We compared experts’ (n=7, 20.6±1.1 years of age) and novices’ (n=7, 20.0±0.4 years of age) visual pattern when returning a serve (Experiment 1) and the influence of the experimental paradigm in experts (Experiment 2). Experts fixated more and longer the upper body and ball, while novices showed a more distributed pattern and with longer fixations outside of the server’s body. Also, the pattern was different when comparing in-situ and laboratory settings, differing mainly in fixation frequency. The influence of expertise was observed in qualitative (relative) and quantitative (absolute) measures of visual behavior with the setting having an important influence. Thus, studies should be as close to the actual situation if trying to understand experts’ behavior