2,835 research outputs found

    Customer experience challenges: bringing together digital, physical and social realms

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    This paper discusses important societal issues, such as individual and societal needs for privacy, security, and transparency. It sets out potential avenues for service innovation in these areas

    Dynamics of Wellbeing Co-Creation: A Psychological Ownership Perspective

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    Purpose: People are responsible for their wellbeing, yet whether they take ownership of their own or even others' wellbeing might vary from actor to actor. Such psychological ownership (PO) influences the dynamics of how wellbeing is co-created, particularly amongst actors, and ultimately determines actors' subjective wellbeing. The paper's research objective pertains to explicating the concept of the co-creation of wellbeing and conceptualizing the dynamics inherent to the co-creation of wellbeing with consideration of the influences of all involved actors from a PO perspective. Design/methodology/approach: To provide a new conceptualization and framework for the dynamics of wellbeing co-creation, this research synthesizes wellbeing, PO and value co-creation literature. Four healthcare cases serve to illustrate the effects of engaged actors' PO on the co-creation of wellbeing. Findings: The derived conceptual framework of dynamic co-creation of wellbeing suggests four main propositions: (1) the focal actor's wellbeing state is the intangible target of the focal actor's and other engaged actors' PO, transformed throughout the process of wellbeing co-creation, (2) PO over the focal actor's wellbeing state is subject to the three interrelated routes of exercising control, investing in the target, and intimately knowing the target, which determine the instigation of wellbeing co-creation, (3) the level of PO over the focal actor's wellbeing state can vary, influence and be influenced by the extent of wellbeing co-creation, (4) the co-creation of wellbeing, evoked by PO, is founded on resource integration, which influences the resources–challenges equilibrium of focal actor and of all other engaged actors, affecting individual subjective wellbeing. Originality/value: This article provides a novel conceptual framework that can shed new light on the co-creation of wellbeing in service research. Through the introduction of PO the transformation of lives and wellbeing can be better understood

    Complaints handling in hospitals: an empirical study of discrepancies between patients' expectations and their experiences

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    <p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Many patients are dissatisfied with the way in which their complaints about health care are dealt with. This study tested the assumption that this dissatisfaction consists – in part at least – of unmet expectations.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Subjects were 279 patients who lodged a complaint with the complaints committees of 74 hospitals in the Netherlands. They completed two questionnaires; one on their expectations at the start of the complaints handling process, and one on their experiences after the complaints procedure (pre-post design; response 50%). Dependent variables are patients' satisfaction and their feeling that justice was done; independent variables are the association between patients' expectations and their experiences.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Only 31% of the patients felt they had received justice from the complaints process.</p> <p>Two thirds of the patients were satisfied with the conduct of the complaints committee, but fewer were satisfied with the conduct of the hospital or the medical professional (29% and 18%). Large discrepancies between expectations and experiences were found in the case of doctors not admitting errors when errors had been made, and of hospital managements not providing information on corrective measures that were taken. Discrepancies collectively explained 51% of patients' dissatisfaction with the committee and one third of patients' dissatisfaction with the hospital and the professional. The feeling that justice was done was influenced by the decision on the complaint (well-founded or not), but also by the satisfaction with the conduct of the committee, the hospital management and the professional involved.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>It is disappointing to observe that less than one third of the patients felt that justice had been done through the complaints handling process. This study shows that the feeling that justice had been done is not only influenced by the judgement of the complaints committee, but also by the response of the professional. Furthermore, hospitals and professionals should communicate on how they are going to prevent a recurrence of the events that led to the complaint.</p

    DEDICATE: proposal for a conceptual framework to develop dementia-friendly Integrated eCare support

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    Background: Evidence shows that the implementation of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) enabled services supporting integrated dementia care represents an opportunity that faces multi-pronged challenges. First, the provision of dementia support is fragmented and often inappropriate. Second, available ICT solutions in this field do not address the full spectrum of support needs arising across an individual’s whole dementia journey. Current solutions fail to harness the potential of available validated e-health services, such as telehealth and telecare, for the purposes of dementia care. Third, there is a lack of understanding of how viable business models in this field can operate. The field comprises both professional and non-professional players that interact and have roles to play in ensuring that useful technologies are developed, implemented and used. Methods: Starting from a literature review, including relevant pilot projects for ICT-based dementia care, we define the major requirements of a system able to overcome the limitations evidenced in the literature, and how this system should be integrated in the socio-technical ecosystem characterizing this disease. From here, we define the DEDICATE architecture of such a system, and the conceptual framework mapping the architecture over the requirements. Results: We identified three macro-requirements, namely the need to overcome: deficient technology innovation, deficient service process innovation, and deficient business models innovation. The proposed architecture is a three level architecture in which the center (data layer) includes patients’ and informal caregivers’ preferences, memories, and other personal data relevant to sustain the dementia journey, is connected through a middleware (service layer), which guarantees core IT services and integration, to dedicated applications (application layer) to sustain dementia care (Formal Support Services, FSS), and to existing formal care infrastructures, in order to guarantee care coordination (Care Coordination Services, CCS). Conclusions: The proposed DEDICATE architecture and framework envisages a feasible means to overcome the present barriers by: (1) developing and integrating technologies that can follow the patient and the caregivers throughout the development of the condition, since the early stages in which the patient is able to build up preferences and memories will be used in the later stages to maximise personalization and thereby improve efficacy and usability (technology innovation); (2) guaranteeing the care coordination between formal and informal caregivers, and giving an active yet supported role to the latter (service innovation); and (3) integrating existing infrastructures and care models to decrease the cost of the overall care pathway, by improving system interoperability (business model innovation)

    Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

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    The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined. For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4, while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than 90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

    Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

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    The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined. For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4, while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than 90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

    Search for new physics with same-sign isolated dilepton events with jets and missing transverse energy

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    A search for new physics is performed in events with two same-sign isolated leptons, hadronic jets, and missing transverse energy in the final state. The analysis is based on a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 4.98 inverse femtobarns produced in pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC. This constitutes a factor of 140 increase in integrated luminosity over previously published results. The observed yields agree with the standard model predictions and thus no evidence for new physics is found. The observations are used to set upper limits on possible new physics contributions and to constrain supersymmetric models. To facilitate the interpretation of the data in a broader range of new physics scenarios, information on the event selection, detector response, and efficiencies is provided.Comment: Published in Physical Review Letter

    Azimuthal anisotropy of charged particles at high transverse momenta in PbPb collisions at sqrt(s[NN]) = 2.76 TeV

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    The azimuthal anisotropy of charged particles in PbPb collisions at nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energy of 2.76 TeV is measured with the CMS detector at the LHC over an extended transverse momentum (pt) range up to approximately 60 GeV. The data cover both the low-pt region associated with hydrodynamic flow phenomena and the high-pt region where the anisotropies may reflect the path-length dependence of parton energy loss in the created medium. The anisotropy parameter (v2) of the particles is extracted by correlating charged tracks with respect to the event-plane reconstructed by using the energy deposited in forward-angle calorimeters. For the six bins of collision centrality studied, spanning the range of 0-60% most-central events, the observed v2 values are found to first increase with pt, reaching a maximum around pt = 3 GeV, and then to gradually decrease to almost zero, with the decline persisting up to at least pt = 40 GeV over the full centrality range measured.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

    X-ray emission from the Sombrero galaxy: discrete sources

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    We present a study of discrete X-ray sources in and around the bulge-dominated, massive Sa galaxy, Sombrero (M104), based on new and archival Chandra observations with a total exposure of ~200 ks. With a detection limit of L_X = 1E37 erg/s and a field of view covering a galactocentric radius of ~30 kpc (11.5 arcminute), 383 sources are detected. Cross-correlation with Spitler et al.'s catalogue of Sombrero globular clusters (GCs) identified from HST/ACS observations reveals 41 X-rays sources in GCs, presumably low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs). We quantify the differential luminosity functions (LFs) for both the detected GC and field LMXBs, whose power-low indices (~1.1 for the GC-LF and ~1.6 for field-LF) are consistent with previous studies for elliptical galaxies. With precise sky positions of the GCs without a detected X-ray source, we further quantify, through a fluctuation analysis, the GC LF at fainter luminosities down to 1E35 erg/s. The derived index rules out a faint-end slope flatter than 1.1 at a 2 sigma significance, contrary to recent findings in several elliptical galaxies and the bulge of M31. On the other hand, the 2-6 keV unresolved emission places a tight constraint on the field LF, implying a flattened index of ~1.0 below 1E37 erg/s. We also detect 101 sources in the halo of Sombrero. The presence of these sources cannot be interpreted as galactic LMXBs whose spatial distribution empirically follows the starlight. Their number is also higher than the expected number of cosmic AGNs (52+/-11 [1 sigma]) whose surface density is constrained by deep X-ray surveys. We suggest that either the cosmic X-ray background is unusually high in the direction of Sombrero, or a distinct population of X-ray sources is present in the halo of Sombrero.Comment: 11 figures, 5 tables, ApJ in pres
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