BACKGROUND Cost-of-illness (COI) studies of Multiple Sclerosis (MS) are vital components for describing the economic burden of MS, and are frequently used in model studies of interventions of MS. We conducted a systematic review of studies estimating the COI of MS, to compare costs between studies and examine cost drivers, emphasizing generalizability and methodological choices. MATERIAL AND ...

Licensed London taxi drivers show that humans have a remarkable capacity to acquire and use knowledge of a large complex city to navigate within it. Gray matter volume differences in the hippocampus relative to controls have been reported to accompany this expertise. While these gray matter differences could result from using and updating spatial representations, they might instead be influence...

BACKGROUND The 14 countries that are scaling up voluntary male medical circumcision (VMMC) for HIV prevention are also considering early infant male circumcision (EIMC) to ensure longer-term reductions in HIV incidence. The cost of implementing EIMC is an important factor in scale-up decisions. We conducted a comparative cost analysis of EIMC performed by nurse-midwives and doctors using the Ac...

The use of all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) has increased in the United States and elsewhere over the last three decades, along with an increased frequency of incidents resulting in serious injuries, among which have been head injuries. ATVs are designed for motorized off-highway work and recreation, can weigh up to 600 lbs (272 kg), and may reach speeds as high as 75 mph (120 km/h). ATV crashes, in...

Embedded systems are widely used, from consumer electronics, to industrial equipment, to spacecraft. With embedded systems becoming more complex, new challenges are presented to application developers. In this dissertation, we focus on three of the most important: (i) Network simulation tools are widely used for sensor network testing and evaluation. Simulation performance affects the efficienc...

The ability to develop cost-effective, scalable and robust bioprocesses for human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) will be key to their commercial success as cell therapies and tools for use in drug screening and disease modelling studies. This review outlines key process economic drivers for hPSCs and progress made on improving the economic and operational feasibility of hPSC bioprocesses. Facto...

OBJECTIVE COPD is associated with significant economic burden. The objective of this study was to explore the direct and indirect costs associated with COPD and identify the key cost drivers of disease management in Greece. METHODS A Delphi panel of Greek pulmonologists was conducted, which aimed at eliciting local COPD treatment patterns and resource use. Resource use was translated into cos...

Activity-based costing (ABC) tries to allocate overhead costs to cost objects more accurately than traditional cost systems. However, since ABC proportionalizes overhead costs it is a heuristic. The paper uses simulations and mixedinteger programming to analyze the extent of the sub-optimality incurred by ABC-heuristics. While previous research has focused on ABC systems with a simple set of co...

OBJECTIVES Because of the increasing prevalence of dementia worldwide, combined with limited healthcare expenditures, a better understanding of the main cost drivers of dementia in different care settings is needed. METHODS A systematic review of cost-of-illness (COI) studies in dementia was conducted from 2003 to 2012, searching the following databases: PubMed (Medline), Cochrane Library, Sc...