Consultancy to progress hospital in the home care provision: Final report, CHERE Project Report No 13

In July 1998, the Commonwealth Department of Health and Family Services commissioned the Centre for Health Economics Research and Evaluation (CHERE) to identify and document Hospital in the Home (HITH) care models nationally and internationally. The purpose of this consultancy was to examine the appropriateness of this form of care for acutely ill patients and to make recommendations about how to increase the utilisation and cost effectiveness of services. Hospital in the Home is emerging internationally and within Australia as a viable alternative form of provision of acute care. The benefits of HITH have generally been seen in terms of its capacity to provide a cost-effective and acceptable alternative to hospital inpatient care, which reduces pressure on hospital beds. However, so far there has only been limited evaluation to lend support to these claims. Over the past decade a wide range of hospital in the home programs have been introduced across the Australian health care system. These programs have often emerged in response to local factors and have a range of different purposes, funding and organisational arrangements, and varying levels of success. In some states hospital in the home has been formalised into a program, whereas in other parts of Australia the introduction of HITH has been left to local decision makers. Thus, the experience of HITH has been extremely variable. It is appropriate at this stage to draw together information about what services are available, how acceptable these services are and what they have achieved. This information is important for determining the future directions of HITH in Australia, as well as providing a valuable resource for service providers and policy makers.Hospital in the home, Australia

Let’s Talk – Interoperability between University CRIS/IR and Researchfish : a case study from the UK

Research funders and research organisations both require feedback on the progress, productivity and quality of the research they support. This information originates with researchers, but may be captured in a variety of systems including University CRIS/IR and funder systems. In 2014 all 7 national Research Councils (collectively referred to as RCUK) implemented a harmonised approach to the collection of research output data, currently supported by Researchfish Ltd (referred to as the Researchfish® system). In 2016 this process is gathering feedback from over 60,000 researchers in all UK Universities, and for funders in the USA, Canada, Denmark and the Netherlands, tracking more than £40billion of public and charity research investment and is adding to a dataset of more than 1.5 million outputs. Researchers, research managers and funders want to find ways to capture this data once and achieve wide re-use of the information. Working together University and Research Council officers, Researchfish Ltd. and Jisc have highlighted that it is important for the “interoperability” between research information systems to be improved. These organisations have started a programme of work to improve the bi-directional flow of information between University and funder systems

The metric tide: report of the independent review of the role of metrics in research assessment and management

This report presents the findings and recommendations of the Independent Review of the Role of Metrics in Research Assessment and Management. The review was chaired by Professor James Wilsdon, supported by an independent and multidisciplinary group of experts in scientometrics, research funding, research policy, publishing, university management and administration. This review has gone beyond earlier studies to take a deeper look at potential uses and limitations of research metrics and indicators. It has explored the use of metrics across different disciplines, and assessed their potential contribution to the development of research excellence and impact. It has analysed their role in processes of research assessment, including the next cycle of the Research Excellence Framework (REF). It has considered the changing ways in which universities are using quantitative indicators in their management systems, and the growing power of league tables and rankings. And it has considered the negative or unintended effects of metrics on various aspects of research culture. The report starts by tracing the history of metrics in research management and assessment, in the UK and internationally. It looks at the applicability of metrics within different research cultures, compares the peer review system with metric-based alternatives, and considers what balance might be struck between the two. It charts the development of research management systems within institutions, and examines the effects of the growing use of quantitative indicators on different aspects of research culture, including performance management, equality, diversity, interdisciplinarity, and the ‘gaming’ of assessment systems. The review looks at how different funders are using quantitative indicators, and considers their potential role in research and innovation policy. Finally, it examines the role that metrics played in REF2014, and outlines scenarios for their contribution to future exercises

Measurement and Modeling of Hydrogen Sulfide Lagoon Emissions from a Swine Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation

Hydrogen sulfide (H₂S) emissions were determined from an anaerobic lagoon at a swine concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) in North Carolina. Measurements of H₂S were made continuously from an anaerobic lagoon using a dynamic flow-through chamber for ∼1 week during each of the four seasonal periods from June 2007 through April 2008. H₂S lagoon fluxes were highest in the summer with a flux of 3.81 ± 3.24 μg m^–2 min^–1 and lowest in the winter with a flux of 0.08 ± 0.09 μg m^–2 min^–1. An air-manure interface (A-MI) mass transfer model was developed to predict H₂S manure emissions. The accuracy of the A-MI mass transfer model in predicting H₂S manure emissions was comprehensively evaluated by comparing the model predicted emissions to the continuously measured lagoon emissions using data from all four seasonal periods. In comparison to this measurement data, the A-MI mass transfer model performed well in predicting H₂S fluxes with a slope of 1.13 and an <i>r</i>² value of 0.60, and a mean bias value of 0.655 μg m^–2 min^–1. The A-MI mass transfer model also performed fairly well in predicting diurnal H₂S lagoon flux trends

Hockey looks to \u27armies\u27 in Intergenerational Report: experts react

Australia must encourage older Australians and women to enter and stay in the workforce in order to increase productivity and protect future prosperity, according to the Intergenerational Report released by Treasurer Joe Hockey today

Modelling adaptive management strategies for coping with the impacts of climate variability and change on riverine algal blooms.

International audienceThe impact of climate change on hydrology and water resources is one of the most critical issues facing the world in the next few decades. In particular, there is a need to quantify the risks associated with maintaining the security of resource quantity and quality, and to assess the effectiveness of potential management strategies. In this paper, we assess the impacts of climate variability and change on one aspect of river health. A simple model of Anabaena algal bloom occurrence at a weir pool in the lower Murrumbidgee River, Australia, has been coupled to a catchment model that is used to simulate streamflow, irrigation demand and diversions, dam water storage and releases, and decision-making by both irrigators and managers. Long-term climate data are obtained from a statistical downscaling algorithm, which, when applied to global climate model predictions can provide climate data suitable for driving the coupled model under a variety of climatic scenarios. The coupled model is then used to assess the impact of climate variability and projected climate change on the frequency, duration and magnitude of Anabaena blooms. The impact of two management strategies for bloom control are also assessed and it is shown that even a single, quite simple, resource-neutral, adaptive management strategy has the potential to substantially reduce the occurrence and impact of algal blooms and to more than compensate for the deleterious impacts of climate change. This result supports the notion that planning for the future can lead to positive outcomes in the present

Additional file 1: of United Kingdom health research analyses and the benefits of shared data

Supplementary Methods. (DOCX 16 kb