In healthcare ethics, autonomy has arguably become the ‘principal principle’. As a principle that can be readily turned into a process, the giving of ‘informed consent’ by a patient has become the surrogate measure of whether medical interventions are ethically acceptable. While ‘informed consent’ processes in medical care are presumed to be robust, research confirms that most patients do not a...

BACKGROUND The project selection process is a crucial step for healthcare organizations at the moment of implementing six sigma programs in both administrative and caring processes. However, six-sigma project selection is often defined as a decision making process with interaction and feedback between criteria; so that it is necessary to explore different methods to help healthcare companies to...

Today medical and Healthcare industry generate loads of diverse data about patients, disease diagnosis, prognosis, management, hospitals’ resources, electronic patient health records, medical devices and etc. Using the most efficient processing and analyzing method for knowledge extraction is a key point to cost-saving in clinical decision making. Data mining, sometimes called data or knowledge...

INTRODUCTION Patient and public involvement is engaging patients, providers, community representatives, and the public in healthcare planning and decision-making. The purpose of this study was to develop a model for the application of patient and public involvement in decision making in the Iranian healthcare system. METHODS A mixed qualitative-quantitative approach was used to develop a conc...

OBJECTIVE To study whether the Dutch participation model is a good model of participation. BACKGROUND Patient participation is on the agenda, both on the individual and the collective level. In this study, we focus on the latter by looking at the Dutch model in which patient organizations are involved in many formal decision-making processes. This model can be described as neo-corporatist. ...

Decision making is an essential part of oral healthcare. It involves diagnostic and therapeutic uncertainties, providers heuristics and biases, patients preferences and values, as well as cost considerations. A model for the factors influencing decisions in healthcare was described in 2000 by Chapman & Sonnenberg (10) and has been adapted here to discuss decision making in implant dentistry. Th...

Performance analysis is an important way for hospitals to achieve higher efficiency and effectiveness in providing services to their customers. The performance of the healthcare system can be measured by many indicators, but it is difficult to improve them simultaneously due to the limited resources. A feasible way is to identify the central and influential indicators to improve healthcare perf...

In palliative medicine, healthcare providers aim to provide end-of-life cancer patients with a plan of care to minimize pain and manage symptoms, while providing psychosocial and educational support to patients and their families. Unfortunately, it has been reported that patients often experience unnecessary suffering due to ineffective symptom management as they near end-of-life. Recent advanc...