To help disaster response organizations improve the management of regional emergency assets and operations, we propose to interface an agent-based, discrete event simulator with a geographic information system and a rule base (describing standard policies and protocols for various disaster responses). The system architecture will enable modules to dynamically “talk” with each other by exchangin...

OBJECTIVE Environmental emergencies and disasters are becoming more frequent in developing nations. Between 1992 and 1996, disasters affected an annual average of 4.5 million Oceania residents. Unfortunately, public health planners in the region and responders throughout the world have little evidence on which to base measures of emergency preparedness. Indicators of preparedness must be identi...

OBJECTIVE To assess the effectiveness of intra-aortic balloon counterpulsation (IABC) as adjunctive treatment in patients undergoing abdominal operations. DESIGN Retrospective review of patient medical records to determine the incidence of mortality following abdominal surgery and the incidence of complications from IABC. SETTING University-based, tertiary care hospital. PATIENTS Sixty-ei...

BACKGROUND Hospital-based Emergency Departments are struggling to provide timely care to a steadily increasing number of unscheduled ED visits. Dwindling compensation and rising ED closures dictate that meeting this challenge demands greater operational efficiency. METHODS Using techniques from operations research theory, as well as a novel event-driven algorithm for processing priority queue...

BACKGROUND Subspecialisation within general surgery has today reached further than ever. However, on-call time, an unchanged need for broad surgical skills are required to meet the demands of acute surgical disease and trauma. The introduction of a new subspecialty in North America that deals solely with acute care surgery and trauma is an attempt to offer properly trained surgeons also during ...

The rescue operations for emergency events usually require multiple emergency departments to cooperate with each other to provide effective and efficient resource allocation plans within a short time limit and dynamically adjust the plans as necessary. In the paper, an agent-based resource allocation approach is proposed to automatically allocate rescue resources to concurrent emergency events ...

INTRODUCTION Unplanned emergency operations in colorectal cancers (CRC) are generally associated with increased risk of operative complications. This study aimed to examine the association, if any, between an endoscopic finding of obstructing tumor and the subsequent need for an emergency operation, with the aim of determining if this finding could be useful in identifying CRC cases who are mor...