Since no organization can have unlimited resources, strategists should decide on a strategy that can provide the greatest benefits to the organization. Decisions on strategy formulation commit the organization to produce specific products, work in specific markets, and exploit certain resources and technologies for a relatively long time. Strategies dictate the long-term competitive advantages ...

BACKGROUND We tested melodic auditory alarms recommended in the IEC 60601-1-8 standard for medical electrical equipment for ease of learning and discrimination, and for effectiveness during a timeshared task. METHODS Twenty-two critical care nurses learned the IEC 60601-1-8 melodic alarms over two training sessions more than a week apart, with or without mnemonics suggested in the standard. S...

Clinical engineering departments in hospitals are responsible for establishing and regulating a Medical Equipment Management Program to ensure that medical devices are safe and reliable. In order to mitigate functional failures, significant and critical devices should be identified and prioritized. In this paper, we present a multi-criteria decision-making model to prioritize medical devices ac...

This paper reports the first of several tests of new auditory alarms originally proposed by Block et al. [1] and formalized in IEC 60601-1-8 for use in medical electrical equipment. We test whether participants who are supplied with the IEC-recommended mnemonics while learning label-alarm associations can more accurately identify the alarms after short periods of learning. Results for 18 partic...

Objectives. We compared two index screening tests for early diagnosis of functional pain: pressure pain measurement by electronic diagnostic equipment, which is accurate but too specialized for primary health care, versus peg testing, which is cost-saving and more easily manageable but of unknown sensitivity and specificity. Early distinction of functional (altered pain perception; nervous sens...