This book provides a pioneering approach to modeling the human diabetic patient using a software agent. It is based on two MASc (Master of Applied Science) theses: one looking at the evolution of the patient agent in time, and another looking the interaction of the patient agent with the healthcare system. It shows that the software agent evolves in a manner analogous to the human patient and exhibits typical attributes of the illness such as reacting to food consumption, medications, and activity. This agent model can be used in a number of different ways, including as a prototype for a specific human patient with the purpose of helping to identify when that patient's condition deviates from normal variations. The software agent can also be used to study the interaction between the human patient and the health care system. This book is of interest to anyone involved in the management of diabetic patients or in societal research into the management of diabetes. The diabetic patient agent was developed using the Ackerman model for diabetes, but this model can be easily adapted for any other model subject with the necessary physiological data to support that model.

'New Technologies in Hospital Information Systems' is launched by the European Telematics Applications Project 'Healthcare Advanced Networked System Architecture' (HANSA) with support of the GMDS WG Hospital Information Systems and the GMDS FA Medical Informatics. It contains 28 high quality papers dealing with architectural concepts, models and developments for hospital information systems. The book has been organized in seven sections: Reference Architectures, Modelling and Applications, The Distributed Healthcare Environment, Intranet Solutions, Object Orientation, Networked Solutions and Standards and Applications. The HANSA project is based upon the European Pre-standard for Healthcare Information System Architecture which has been drawn up by CEN/TC 251 PT01-13. The editors felt that this standard will have a major impact on future developments for hospital information systems. Therefore the standard is completely included as an appendix.

This book provides a much-needed account of informal community-based approaches to working with mental distress. It starts from the premise that contemporary mainstream psychiatry and psychology struggle to capture how distress results from complex embodied arrays of social experiences that are embedded within specific historical, cultural, political and economic settings. The authors challenge mainstream understandings of mental health that position a naive public in need of mental health literacy. Instead it is clear that a considerable amount of invaluable mental distress work is undertaken in spaces in our communities that are not understood as mental health treatments. This book represents one of the first attempts to position these kinds of spaces at the center of how we understand and address problems of mental distress and suffering. The chapters draw on case studies from the UK and abroad to point toward an exciting new paradigm based on informal community and socially oriented approaches to mental health. Written in an unusually accessible and engaging style, this book will appeal to social science students, academics, practitioners and policy makers interested in community and social approaches to mental health.

Over time, a country's healthcare system typically undergoes a number of developments as new demands emerge from the public and new legislation is passed from the government. These systems are composed of a number of interconnected parts, each one vital to the overall success of the system. Flipping Health Care through Retail Clinics and Convenient Care Models addresses the present state of the health system by focusing on current trends and future developments that could assist in delivering accessible and cost-effective medical care to the general public. Bringing together components of the present and future, this publication serves as an essential tool for students and researchers who want to develop a thorough understanding of the changing scope of the health industry in the public sphere.

This unifying volume offers a clear theoretical framework for the research shaping the emerging direction of informatics in health care. Contributors ground the reader in the basics of informatics methodology and design, including creating salient research questions, and explore the human dimensions of informatics in studies detailing how patients perceive, respond to, and use health data. Real-world examples bridge the theoretical and the practical as knowledge management-based solutions are applied to pervasive issues in information technologies and service delivery. Together, these articles illustrate the scope of health possibilities for informatics, from patient care management to hospital administration, from improving patient satisfaction to expanding the parameters of practice. Highlights of the coverage:* Design science research opportunities in health care * IS/IT governance in health care: an integrative model * Persuasive technologies and behavior modification through technology: design of a mobile application for behavior change * The development of a hospital secure messaging and communication platform: a conceptualization * The development of intelligent patient-centric systems for health care * An investigation on integrating Eastern and Western medicine with informatics Interest in Theories to Inform Superior Health Informatics Research and Practice cuts across academia and the healthcare industry. Its audience includes healthcare professionals, physicians and other clinicians, practicing informaticians, hospital administrators, IT departments, managers, and management consultants, as well as scholars, researchers, and students in health informatics and public health.

Mental Health Outcome Evaluation bridges the gap between traditional research and evaluation methods by presenting an alternative to the highly technical and statistical methods developed in the laboratory for mental health care professionals. It focuses on outcome evaluation of mental health services for adults, concentrating on the general principles that can be used to assess the service effectiveness of community health centers, clinics, and private practices. The book presents a formidable argument for descriptive outcome studies through its evaluation of the results and consequences of care and treatment as well as clinician ratings. It is written in a non-technical style, making it accessible to anyone in the mental health industry.
Key Features
* Addresses industry efforts to monitor and assess information about results and consequences of mental health care and treatment
* Evaluates use of clinician ratings as outcome information
* Offers accessible general principles for managers and mental health services researchers
* Presents the best argument for descriptive outcome studies

The Internet and other technological developments are now playing increasing roles in the management of knowledge within consumer health behavior and the delivery of health services. Biomedical Knowledge Management: Infrastructures and Processes for E-Health Systems provides multidisciplinary best practices and experiences in knowledge management relevant to the healthcare industry. A useful reference for field researchers, academicians, and healthcare practitioners, this Handbook of Research presents an in-depth examination of common approaches to shared problems in the management of knowledge within e-health services.

Shock Therapy For the American Health Care System describes the problems of the health care system and offers a program of comprehensive reform that is more far-reaching than anything currently being proposed. From a veteran physician comes this remarkably clear-eyed look at what's wrong with how we adminster and pay for health care and what can be done to fix it. In Shock Therapy for the American Health Care System: Why Comprehensive Reform Is Needed, Dr. Robert Levine offers an easily understandable diagnosis of the problems plaguing our current health care infrastructure, with discussions that include the roles of various stakeholders—insurance companies, "big pharma," hospitals, health care providers, and patients. He also dispels a number of myths designed to make voters leery of any reform efforts. Levine's comprehensive plan addresses everything from bloated bureaucracies to unnecessary procedures to the handling of negligence and malpractice lawsuits/claims. Throughout, Levine backs his proposals with facts and comparisons to systems in various countries, and concludes that even now, with disaster looming, the ultimate goal of providing health insurance for every American is achievable and affordable.

Research has paid little attention to date on how European Union law and regulation affect both the public-private mix in healthcare and the organization of private health insurance as an industry. Filling this gap, this collective book provides insights on the political economy of EU insurance regulation, its impact on private health insurers and on its interactions with domestic healthcare policy-making in four countries. Assembling original contributions drafted by a multidisciplinary team, Private Health Insurance and the European Union offers a thorough examination of a largely unrecognized source of EU influence in healthcare - and sheds a new light on the role played by private actors in social policy. Chapter 1 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

This far-reaching volume analyzes the social, cultural, political, and economic factors contributing to mental health issues and shaping treatment options in the Asian and Pacific world. Multiple lenses examine complex experiences and needs in this vast region, identifying not only cultural issues at the individual and collective levels, but also the impacts of colonial history, effects of war and disasters, and the current climate of globalization on mental illness and its care. These concerns are located in the larger context of physical health and its determinants, worldwide goals such as reducing global poverty, and the evolving mental health response to meet rising challenges affecting the diverse populations of the region. Chapters focus on countries in East, Southeast, and South Asia plus Oceania and Australia, describing: * National history of psychiatry and its acceptance. * Present-day mental health practice and services. * Mental/physical health impact of recent social change. * Disparities in accessibility, service delivery, and quality of care. * Collaborations with indigenous and community approaches to healing. * Current mental health resources, the state of policy, and areas for intervention. A welcome addition to the global health literature, Mental Health in Asia and the Pacific brings historical depth and present-day insight to practitioners providing services in this diverse area of the world as well as researchers and policymakers studying the region.

This theory-to-practice guide offers mental health practitioners a powerful narrative-based approach to working with clients in clinical practice. It opens with a primer on contemporary narrative theory and offers a robust framework based on the art and techniques of listening for deeper, more meaningful understanding and intervention. Chapters expand on these foundational concepts by applying them to a diverse range of populations and issues, among them race and ethnicity, human sexuality, immigration, and the experience of trauma, grief, and loss. The author's engaging voice, thoughtful pedagogical style, and extensive use of examples and exercises also work together to inform the reader's own narrative of growth and self-knowledge. Included in the coverage:* Encountering the self, encountering the other: narratives of race and ethnicity.* Surviving together: individual and communal narratives in the wake of tragedy.* Spiritual stories: exploring ultimate meaning in social work practice.* Sexual stories: narratives of sexual identity, gender, and sexual development.* Leaving home, finding home: narrative practice with immigrant populations.* Moving on: narrative perspectives on grief and loss. Narrative Theory in Clinical Social Work Practice is geared toward students as well as seasoned social workers, and professionals and practitioners in related clinical fields interested in informing their work with a narrative approach.

In the wake of structural adjustment programs in the 1980s and health reforms in the 1990s, the majority of sub-Saharan African governments spend less than ten dollars per capita on health annually, and many Africans have limited access to basic medical care. Using a community-level approach, anthropologist Ellen E. Foley analyzes the implementation of global health policies and how they become intertwined with existing social and political inequalities in Senegal. ""Your Pocket Is What Cures You"" examines qualitative shifts in health and healing spurred by these reforms, and analyzes the dilemmas they create for health professionals and patients alike. It also explores how cultural frameworks, particularly those stemming from Islam and Wolof ethnomedicine, are central to understanding how people manage vulnerability to ill health. While offering a critique of neoliberal health policies, ""Your Pocket Is What Cures You"" remains grounded in ethnography to highlight the struggles of men and women who are precariously balanced on twin precipices of crumbling health systems and economic decline. Their stories demonstrate what happens when market-based health reforms collide with material, political, and social realities in African societies.

After World War II, Sweden led the Western world in social programs. By the 1970s it was considered a model of the successful welfare state, providing a broader and more elaborate system of social programs and security to more people than any other country, the centerpiece of which was its health care system. As Twaddle explains, however, by 1990 there was a significant shift in Sweden's health policy debates.

Instead of speaking about the medical care system in terms of effectiveness, solidarity, and public planning, the discussions grew focused on competition, markets, and privatization, taking on more of the characteristics of the U.S. system. Twaddle explores the nature of the proposed changes in medical care, the context in which those changes were being proposed, and the steps that were taken to implement change. He concludes that the problem of market- oriented reforms in health care seems to be almost universal.

This book presents emerging technology management approaches and applied cases from leading infrastructure sectors such as energy, healthcare, transportation and education. Featuring timely topics such as fracking technology, electric cars, Google's eco-friendly mobile technology and Amazon Prime Air, the volume's contributions explore the current management challenges that have resulted from the development of new technologies, and present tools, applications and frameworks that can be utilized to overcome these challenges. Emerging technologies make us rethink how our infrastructure will look in the future. Solar and wind generation, for example, have already changed the dynamics of the power sector. While they have helped to reduce the use of fossil fuels, they have created management complications due to their intermittent natures. Meanwhile, information technologies have changed how we manage healthcare, making it safer and more accessible, but not without implications for cost and administration. Autonomous cars are around the corner. On-line education is no longer a myth but still a largely unfulfilled opportunity. Digitization of car ownership is achievable thanks to emerging business models leveraging new communication technologies. The major challenge is how to evaluate the relative costs and benefits of these technologies. This book offers insights from both researchers and industry practitioners to address this challenge and anticipate the impact of new technologies on infrastructure now and in the future.

Nearly twenty percent of Americans live today with some sort of disability, and this number will grow in coming decades as the population ages. Despite this, the U.S. health care system is not set up to provide care comfortably, safely, and efficiently to persons with disabilities. Individuals with disabilities can therefore face significant barriers to obtaining high quality health care. Some barriers result from obvious impediments, such as doors without automatic openers and examining tables that are too high. Other barriers arise from faulty communication between patients and health care professionals, including misconceptions among clinicians about the daily lives, preferences, values, and abilities of persons with disabilities. Yet additional barriers relate to health insurance limits on items and services essential to maximizing health and independence. This book examines the health care experiences of persons who are blind, deaf, hard of hearing, or who have difficulties using their legs, arms, or hands. The book then outlines strategies for overcoming or circumventing barriers to care, starting by just asking persons with disabilities about workable solutions. Creating safe and accessible health care for persons with disabilities will likely benefit everyone at some point. This book has three parts. The first part looks at the historical roots of healthcare access for persons with disabilities in the United States. The second part discusses the current situation and the special challenges for those with disabilities. The third part looks forward to discuss the ways in which healthcare quality and access can improve.

This book explores the undeveloped potential of video-ethnography to study the material, embodied and sensory dimensions of workplace practices. With the growing interest in sociomateriality and the development of research on the embodied and sensory dimensions of organizational practices, some methodological challenges of this type of research need to be addressed. The main purpose of this book is to present various forms of video-ethnography that make organizational phenomena visible and help better appreciate the organizing properties of bodies, affects, senses and spaces in workplace practices. To do so, illustrative cases based on video-ethnography was discussed to understand how experiential and unspoken ways of knowing produced through a video-based approach can be made meaningful and relevant to study the material, embodied and sensory dimension of work practices. This book is addressed to researchers and students in social sciences and organizational studies and offers a methodological reflection on how to study the material, embodied, and sensory dimensions of organizational life.

This book explores three interlinked themes: the models and nature of organizational change; the implementation of Business Process Reengineering (BPR); and the management of contemporary public sector organizations. The authors describe and evaluate a BPR programme in a major NHS teaching hospital - its successes and its shortcomings.