Evidence Synthesis for Decision Making 4

Decisions of Value: Going Backstage; Comment on “Contextual Factors Influencing Cost and Quality Decisions in Health and Care: A Structured Evidence Review and Narrative Synthesis”

This commentary expands on two of the key themes briefly raised in the paper involving analysis of the evidence about key contextual influences on decisions of value. The first theme focuses on the need to explore in more detail what is called backstage decision-making looking at how actual decisions are made drawing on evidence from ethnographies about decision-making. These studies point to l...

Contextual Factors Influencing Cost and Quality Decisions in Health and Care: A Structured Evidence Review and Narrative Synthesis

Background Decisions affecting cost and quality are taken across health and care but investigation of the mediating role of context in these is in its infancy. This paper presents a synthesis of the evidence on the contextual factors that influence ‘decisions of value’ – defined as those characterised by having a significant and demonstrable impact on both quality and resources – in health and ...

Understanding Contextual Factors in Cost, Quality and Priority Setting Decisions in Health; Comment on “Contextual Factors Influencing Cost and Quality Decisions in Health and Care: A Structured Evidence Review and Narrative Synthesis”

There is growing recognition in the academic literature that critical decisions concerning resource allocation and resource management in health and care are influenced by a range of contextual factors. In their paper in this journal, Williams et al define these ‘decisions of value’ as being characterized by a significant and demonstrable impact on quality and resources in health and care. ‘Dec...

The Use of Evidence by Decision-Making Committees

Improvement of Methanol Synthesis Process by using a Novel Sorption-Enhanced Fluidized-bed Reactor, Part II: Multiobjective Optimization and Decision-making Method

In the first part (Part I) of this study, a novel fluidized bed reactor was modeled mathematically for methanol synthesis in the presence of in-situ water adsorbent named Sorption Enhanced Fluidized-bed Reactor (SE-FMR) is modeled, mathematically. Here, the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm-II (NSGA-II) is applied for multi-objective optimization of this configuration. Inlet temperature o...

Evidence for Informing Health Policy Development in Low- Income Countries (LICS): Perspectives of Policy Actors in Uganda

Background Although there is a general agreement on the benefits of evidence informed health policy development given resource constraints especially in Low-Income Countries (LICs), the definition of what evidence is, and what evidence is suitable to guide decision-making is still unclear. Our study is contributing to filling this knowledge gap. We aimed to explore health policy actors’ views r...